Author: admin

As time passes, our earlier resolve can begin to wane. In years past, we may have set ambitious personal goals for ourselves as we entered each new year. We established bold resolutions. We raised the bar for our job performance and physical health. But after years of falling short or failing, we may have grown timid, or weary. Perhaps striving year by year to better ourselves has become discouraging, or demoralizing. It may be that we are simply meekly entering the new year without any real plans to advance in our life. But that should not be so.

God has a unique purpose for your life. He intends for you to become like Christ. He wants your life to produce much fruit. What He began in you, He intends to complete. So it may be that you need to buckle down and press on. It could be that this coming year might be a breakthrough year, if you don’t lose heart. It could be that you are on the cusp of a significant advance, if you persevere. So as you enter this new year, take time to consider those things you know God has been trying to do in your life. Has He completed it? What about your relationships? Is God seeking to bring healing? What is God seeking to do in your family? Are you trusting Him for it until God brings it to pass?

In what areas of your life do you need to keep pressing on? Will you commit to do so?

What is in your life that is holding you back from greater fruitfulness for God’s kingdom? What habit or doubt or attitude or fear is limiting your effectiveness for God? What is keeping your Christian maturity in the same place instead of allowing you to move forward to a greater level? Whatever it is, it must die.

You ought to hate anything in your life that is keeping you from being more like Christ. But in actual fact, we tend to excuse and hold on to those issues. We can become so protective of our life that we cling to the very things that are keeping us in bondage. We would be happy to do more for God, or to take on additional responsibilities, but dying is wholly unappealing.

 As you draw near to the end of the year, take an inventory of your life. Are there habits, practices, attitudes that need to be cast aside before you enter the new year? Don’t carry into the next year the same baggage you had in the previous one. Let God weed out any encumbrance in your life that is holding you back. It may well be that this new year is your greatest year of spiritual advance you have ever experienced.

There are many fascinating facts about the birth of Jesus. It is an event that has caused the greatest of Bible scholars to debate and study for centuries. One of those profound details is who the angels of heaven first let know about the miraculous birth of the Son of God.

We would have imagined that Gabriel would have at least sent word to Caesar in Rome. An announcement might have been expected in Athens or certainly in Jerusalem. We might have thought that the religious leaders of that day would have been notified somehow. But they were not.

Instead, as soon as the most famous birth in history occurred, a heavenly host excitedly interrupted the night shift for some weary shepherds, living outside with their sheep, so they could hear the good news. Shepherds were often viewed as social outcasts. As untrustworthy, shiftless thieves whose testimony was not even valid in a court of law. Surely God could have alerted more respectable people of the birth of His only Son!

But it was to working people, in the middle of their ordinary workday, that the angels were dispatched to proclaim the incredible news. God loves ordinary, working people. They are the ones who know of their need of a Savior. They are the ones whose demanding lives remind them daily of their need for hope, and God’s presence.

The young peasant girl had just been told the most amazing thing she had ever heard. It was humanly impossible. It was difficult to understand. It was terrifying!

Ironically, it also meant that the righteous young woman would also be subjected to ridicule and gossip for allegedly having loose morals. What would her tiny village think when this unwed mother began to show that she was pregnant? Would she be stoned to death for immorality? Having kept herself pure her entire life, how painful would that be for the teenager to endure peoples’ stares and laughter and disapproving nods? How hard would it be for this young mother to watch her son be criticized, hated, and brutally murdered? God had assigned her a glorious, yet extremely difficult road to follow.

We might understand if Mary had argued that she was not the one to carry such a load. She might have at least asked for time to think about whether she was willing to undertake such an enormous responsibility. After all, this would disrupt all the plans she had made for her life.

Yet she did not. Instead, she uttered one of the simplest and yet most profound statements of submission to God’s will that can be found in the Bible. Mary acknowledged that she was but God’s maidservant. Hers was not to question or argue or debate. Hers was to humbly obey. In her response, it became clear why God had chosen her in the first place.

You, too, are God’s servant. Are you embracing His will for you with the same willingness and humility? What does your response to Him reflect about your walk with God?

Mary was flabbergasted. The angel Gabriel, God’s special heavenly messenger, had just informed her that almighty God planned to have her miraculously give birth to the Son of God. It was incredible! It was humanly impossible.

In response, Mary asked a question, not out of unbelief, but out of wonder. “How?” She knew she stood at the threshold of an incredible journey with God. Ultimately the salvation of all humanity throughout all of time would rest on what God did through her ordinary life. It was breathtaking to consider.

Throughout our lives we will immerse ourselves in numerous mundane tasks. We’ll wash dishes, drive to work, do laundry, mow the lawn. We’ll put in years at work or spend countless hours raising our children and shuttling them to appointments. But in the course of the mountains of ordinary tasks we will invest our one, precious life in, is there something you can point to that is clearly a work of God? Can you identify one aspect of your life that cannot be merely explained by your own effort and expertise? Is there even one thing you stand in awe of, that almighty God would choose to accomplish through your life? Is your life touching eternity in any way?

It will be those heavenly, divine moments that will be the highlights of your life. Live a life that pleases God and then embrace His will for your life. You may be amazed at what God does.

It is one of humanity’s weaknesses that we desire acclaim and popularity with people. At times individuals will go to enormous lengths to obtain fame, even if it is fleeting. Perhaps it is because we are social beings and we crave the approval and recognition of others. Nevertheless, society often measures people’s status or value based on how much others think of them.

Mary was a teenaged, uneducated, peasant girl who lived in the insignificant village of Nazareth, in the insignificant region of Palestine. No one but her small family and a few friends knew who she was. If it were not for her divine calling, no one today would have ever heard of her. From the world’s perspective, she was a nobody.

But that was not heaven’s perspective. For incredibly, this humble girl from Nazareth had found favor with almighty God. All of heaven knew the pleasure that God found with Mary. It was not because she was wealthy or commanded large armies or that she was brilliant. God saw her heart and was pleased with her faith in Him.

How does heaven see you? You might not lead a large organization or have millions of followers on social media, but God knows you. What does He think?

There has never been anyone, no saint, no religious leader, no martyr, no one, who has lived a more sinless, perfect, God honoring life than Jesus did. No one knew the mind of God the Father more than Jesus. No Bible scholar ever understood Scripture more completely than Jesus did. In every category, Jesus is the pre-eminent example of how to live the Christian life.

That is why it is so profound to realize that Jesus did nothing on His own initiative. Jesus preached no sermon, healed no sick person, and taught no lesson in which His Father had not guided Him. Jesus knew that His calling was not to “make things happen,” but to surrender to His Father’s perfect will. Jesus never prided Himself in his knowledge or understanding. He never assumed that, at least in smaller matters, He could make His own decisions. Jesus did nothing apart from His Father’s guidance.

How is it, then, that we so often take matters into our own hands? Why do we assume we are smart enough, godly enough, talented enough, to “figure things out” on our own? Are we smarter and holier than Jesus? Of course not.

The key to Jesus’ activity was always His Father’s work. The Father always set the agenda for His Son. What made Jesus so effective was that He always recognized when God the Father was working near Him.

One of the most profound truths for Christians and churches today is this: God is always working around you.

The fact that you do not see what God is doing makes no difference to the fact at all. The truth is, God is continually working out His purposes on earth and in peoples’ lives. He never rests. He is never discouraged or thwarted. He is never caught by surprise. Day by day, God is accomplishing His purposes around you.

The key is for us to open our spiritual eyes so we don’t miss what God is doing. It would be tragic to have God working right next to you in someone’s life, and you to miss what was happening.

Some people are entirely closed-minded, regardless of what they say. For them, no amount of compelling evidence or changed life can dissuade them that their opinions are entirely, unquestionably, correct.

The Jewish leaders were convinced that the key to pleasing God and gaining His favor was to be meticulous about their rule keeping. Pleasing God was all about rules, not relationship. They were sadly mistaken.

God sent His only Son, Jesus Christ, to speak face to face with these spiritually blind religious leaders. Jesus even performed a miracle, healing a man who had been lame for 38 years. Nevertheless, these men remained adamant in their beliefs.

In fact, rather than being swayed by the obvious sign of God’s power in Jesus’ life, these misguided leaders sought to kill Jesus for providing evidence that their views were incorrect.

We ought not be too critical of these people, however. For there are times we, too, stubbornly hold on to viewpoints and behaviors that have long since been proven to be inadequate or false. What evidence has Jesus provided you, that you need to change your views?

God is enormously gracious. He regularly gives us far more than we deserve. In the lame man’s case, Jesus gave him exceedingly more than he had asked for. The man wanted sympathy. Jesus gave him a new life. It was undeserved. It was far beyond what the man could ever have imagined. Such is the nature of grace.

At times we can presume upon grace. We can assume that God is delighted to grant us whatever we desire and to overlook our every sin. We assume God will always “be there” for us. We act as if when God looks upon our sin, He lovingly dismisses it and offers us a heavenly hug.

It would be a mistake to treat the grace of God lightly. Jesus healed a man out of grace. Such a healing was undeserved and unexpected. Jesus granted physical healing when it had not even been requested. But Jesus only forgives our sin when we repent and believe. When Jesus found the man, He instructed him to “sin no more.” Jesus warned that a greater predicament than lameness could befall the man if he did not heed His words.

Jesus daily provides us, out of His providential care, with bountiful blessings. That is His prerogative. But never take His forgiveness of your sin, or His relationship with you for granted. For Jesus’ next words to us will also be, “Sin no more.”