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Tuesday, December 24, 2019

Too Much Christmas?

 “ Christmas is getting to be too much,” an acquaintance of mine shouted to me as he hurried after his wife and their quickly filling shopping cart. I wonder if that’s true? Can celebration of our Savior’s birth become “too much” ? The short answer is no, but truth is much has been made of Christmas that isn’t Christmas. 

Music has been composed. Songs have been written and sung. 
Characters have been conjured from  imaginations. Yarns were spun, fables were told and retold. Wonderous legends where carved into our hearts. When man gazed at sacred truth and perceived something malleable, we fashioned a Christmas spirit. Century after century we pounded on an amplified inflated dramatized versions of facts. Traditions have been held and are kept now as if the survival of the species depended on them. The season marries the talent and effort of those who would help you see what they see or feel what they feel, or at least wish they could, about Christmas. 

Christmas will always be a loftier  
event than our ability to communicate it. 
So, we deflect our attention from celebration to decoration. We made our plans and got busy. Effectively, running back to chains Christ unshackled us from.

I wonder what plans Mary had just prior to the Gabriel’s visit?
Maybe a grand wedding. 
What dreams did she lay aside to be obedient? Did the memories of what we call Christmas console her visions the crucifixion must have left her with? It's in her words I find the spirit of Christmas.
Luke 
38Then Mary said, “Behold the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be to me according to your word.”

Christmas ushered in a new era of man's ability to serve something greater than our primordial pleasures. Jesus became our spiritual food to curve our emotional and sensual appetites so that we could feast rather than starve. As long as what we celebrate truly is the first coming of Christ, we will never be guilty of overdoing Christmas.

  God's word reminds me we’re to be living sacrifices. Never trade His vision for your Dreams. Never exchange His purpose for you for your passion. For those who cannot break free of those desires, Christmas will always be ”too much”. If through Christ you can declare, ” let it be to me according to your word, Lord” it will be enough. And Christmas will always be as it should be.

May the season afford you peace in every blessing. May Love and Joy come to you. 
Merry Christmas,
Clint

Tuesday, August 20, 2019

When They Walk Away: 4 Reasons People Leave the Faith


Does the name Marty Sampson mean anything to you? If your like me, you never heard of him until last week. However, if you attend church, chances are you’ve heard his music. Sampson has been a singer-songwriter and musician for Hillsong United since the group began in 1998. He has written and performed lots of songs. Earlier this month in an Instagram post, Sampson said he was, “ loosing his faith and was ok with it” . Later, after pressure from his audience and colleagues to clarify, Sampson said he wasn’t renouncing Christianity but described his faith as on “shaky ground”.

 Sampson isn’t by himself.  Joshua Harris, the former pastor of Covenant Life Church, a mega church located in Maryland, and the founding church of Sovereign Grace Ministries, “walked away from the faith” following his divorce. Grace Family Fellowship’s pastor, Dave Gass, renounced and condemned the Christian faith after 40 years in the ministry. If you’d like to know more, just look them up on the net.

These kind of stories break my heart for all those who have been effected by the apparent “falling away” of church goers and teachers. Christians will grieve their absences and question the outcome of having followed their teaching. The collateral damage is potentially crushing to relationships. Marriages and friendships may or may not endure, but the comfortable atmosphere will have eroded. The adhesion will have lost some of it’s grip. Trust will now teeter on mortality where forever had once tied an eternal bond. While there are unlimited scenarios surrounding the circumstances of the individual quandaries people find themselves in, nearly all of these kinds of disaffection for God have similarities. If you investigate the stories you’ll find these common threads:

A loss of faith in humanity. The realization that mankind is a hopeless case bent on destroying itself.  It means coming to the understanding, in the name of survival or self preservation, humans have a tendency to become savage beasts. Knowing 
sometimes the best people, the people you know and love the most, will hurt you deeply. So, to them a perfect God could never be real. Ironically, it is this truth that leads many to search for a God, who can fix this, in the first place.

A revelation from Scripture. The understanding that the God of scripture is uncontrollable. He isn’t a galactic cuddly version of Aladdin’s genie. When people discover He has done some things they don’t like, they judge Him as evil. Deciding He cannot be Holy, by their standard, they choose to believe at the very least He shouldn’t exist.  

A loss of faith in themselves. Many times, those who walk away are guilty of some moral failure that has come to light. Since God allowed their sin to come to become public, something His Word promises, they conclude a loving God would never allow them to fall. So, He must not be there for them, nor could He be for anyone else, since they are the best.

A faith in science: When people becomes convinced collectively mankind has obtained enough intellectual knowledge to dismiss the spiritual elements of life and conscience, he will arrogantly determine there is no God. Then he can do as he pleases in the name of advancement. Science, can offer nothing but a satirical faux-hope to mankind. It celebrates individuality, leaves man to law, but gives them no moral code. Science has given the world wonderful advancements in medicine, agriculture, and communications. It also gave us mustard gas, agent orange, and nuclear weapons. While science, as wonderful and benevolent as can be, cannot produce life, it has mastered producing death.

Christians don’t have a faith in humanity either. We believe what we do in this life has eternal consequences. We believe the God of the Bible is all powerful and cannot be controlled nor are there any reasons He should be. We have lost all faith in ourselves, so Jesus now controls us. We believe in scientific facts, but realize they do not disprove God’s existence. We don’t stand on “shaky ground” we stand on the rock of our salvation. We stand on a solid foundation of hope in someone stronger and more intelligent than ourselves. Someone who created individuality, and a morality to temper the laws. We stand on Him who causes science to work and creates life. We believe Him when he said,”...My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness..." (2 Corinthians 12:9).


1 John 2:19  says They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us; but they went out that they might be made manifest, that none of them were of us. 
These words are a reminder that not everyone who calls Jesus Lord actually knows Him. (See Matt 7)
It’s heartbreaking when dynamic influencers walk away from the faith.  The great work Jesus did for us makes walking away inconceivable if it were even possible. Based on what the Bible says here and various other places, many of us believe they never had a faith to walk away from. Still, some of the faith will interpret this as a change of mind and heart in a once upon a time believer. A problem easily remedied by another decision. Others will say they can never return. Here questioning becomes it's designed purpose, a distraction from the evil one. Debating rather than serving is the great sin of our time. The farther away you are from a tragedy the easier the words flow. The closer you are to a tragedy the easier tears flow. From compassionate concerns to angry condemnation, people will respond any and everywhere in between. Meanwhile there's still the mission God called us to. Making disciples.We have not been called to figure out all the mysteries of the universe. We have not been called to a speculation of individuals’ futuristic relationship status with the Almighty. We’ve been called to tell the story of Jesus. 
Humanity’s only Hope is Jesus. My only Hope is Jesus. Your only Hope is Jesus. Run to Jesus for Hope. Run to Jesus for Life. Run to Jesus and Live.




Sunday, June 16, 2019

Less is More


I don't know if you can have too much of a good thing or not, but the older I get, the more I believe " less is more". Most of us, who grew up in America, were sold a "bigger is better" philosophy. It's sown into our DNA, the notion success is measured by quantity or sheer mass. We have been told "go big or go home". Christians need to stop buying it.
So many of us think we need to do something "big" for God. Somehow we forget that God does much with little. He created a universe from nothing except His words. Started a nation with one man named Abraham. God used Gideon and 300 men to scare an army to death. In John Chapter 6, He fed 5000 with five loaves and two fish. The very next day, He cut the size of His following down to twelve men, who would change the world. He miraculously saved countless through the sacrifice of one man named Jesus.

 For some reason, we engineer everything we do and measure everything we accomplish by the numbers. Large numbers are rarely associated with quality. Mc Donald's might have sold the most hamburgers, but I don't think many would argue McDonald's hamburgers are the best . They aren't. The best hamburgers are sold in the little hole in the wall restaurants. Ministries now borrows themes  and tactics from some the biggest and best marketers. If we have to sacrifice  the details to reach the masses, so be it.  Somewhere we forgot small things matter to God.

 In Jesus's concern for the "least of these" , He did not suggest a complex solution. He suggested we supply food and drink for those in need, and a visit for lonely isolated souls. No branding, no marketing. No entertainment. Just one simple strategy. He equated the importance of those considered "the least" to Himself. In other words, the source of life itself.


 Jesus taught in Luke 16:10
 He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much..

So you could say, following Jesus means you might have to sweat the small stuff.
We serve a big God, who cares about the little things.
He even cares about each and every little sparrow. 
That's Good News for us. He is faithful.