December 26 – January 1 – OFF LINE ..
Hope you all had a merry and holy Christmas. I’m taking a few days off.
See you on the 2nd of January 2021!
Praying for a better year!
Terry
There is coming a day, a glorious day, when the night will disappear.
“The city had no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God illuminated it. The Lamb is its light.” [Revelation 21:23 HCSB]
There is coming a day, a glorious day, when there will be no more pain, no more tears.
“And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.” [Revelation 21:4 HCSB]
There is coming a day, a glorious day, when sin and temptation and the enemy of our soul will be no more.
“And fire came down from God out of heaven and devoured them. 10 The devil, who deceived them, was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone where[b] the beast and the false prophet are. And they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.” [Revelation 20:9b-10 HCSB]
I long for that day. I long to see my loved ones who have gone to that glorious day and now abide in the Presence of God. I long to see the day when death is banished, when sorrow will not even be remembered!
“He who testifies to these things says, ‘Surely I am coming quickly.’ Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus! The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.” [Revelation 22:20-21 HCSB]
For now, we wait for that day. We celebrate the First Coming of our LORD and Savior Jesus Christ and earnestly look to the skies for His Return. Amen & Amen.
(773) David Phelps - No More Night (Live) - YouTube
December 26 – January 1 – OFF LINE ..
See you on the 2nd of January 2021! Praying for a better year!
O Holy Night, O Night Divine. That glorious night when Christ came the first time to redeem His own. It changed everything!
The angel who appeared to Joseph set the parameters for Christ Jesus’ first coming, “And she will bring forth a Son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.” [Matthew 2:21 HCSB]
God sent His Son to save us from our sins, from the death and punishment that our sins deserved. He brought grace and truth to us. He took our punishment. He suffered our death. He rose that we might have life and that life more abundant.
No matter how many times I write these things, no matter how many times you read these things, they still have an amazing and marvelous hold on our hearts. I will never grow tired of hearing them. It is not all about the new things I can find in the Scriptures, it is about those old Gospel truths of our salvation which thrill my soul. Tell me again and again about what my Savior has done for me!
But there is another truth, a promise that also thrills my soul – that is, Christ is coming again. He promised He would come back for His own. [John 14:3b HCSB]
This time when He appears it will not be about sin – that issue has already been settled. This time it will be about taking us home to the Father’s House.
“We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed— in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.” [1 Corinthians 15:51 HCSB]
“Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord.” [1 Thessalonians 4:17 HCSB]
Are you listening for the trumpet?
(773) Ivan Parker - Midnight Cry (Live) - YouTube
Last Friday night at The Way we held our annual Candlelight Service where we remembered and honored those who have entered the Presence of the LORD ahead of us. It was a quiet time where we were able to grieve and rejoice. We rang a small bell of remembrance and talked a little about our loved ones.
We ended the service with the song, “O Holy Night.” It is one of the most beautiful of the Christmas songs. I especially love the second verse.
“Long lay the world in sin and error pining, ‘Til He appeared And the soul felt It’s worth. A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices, For yonder breaks a new And glorious morn…”
Those words, those beautiful words, remind us that when Christ Jesus came as that Babe in a Manger, it assured us of just how much God loved us and just how much we are worth. (Remember, we are not worthy of that love, but we are worth what God was willing to pay for us, the precious life’s blood of His Very Son.)
Knowing that, and allowing that to dig deep into our souls, brings a thrilling hope that cannot be destroyed! No matter how bad this world may get, nothing can destroy that new and glorious morning when God became Immanuel, God with Us.
He is with us in our sorrow and tears. He is with us in our weakness, our hungers and thirsts. He is with us in our dying and with us in our death!
That truly was a Night Divine. And now as we celebrate it, we fall our knees in worship to our Great God who came for His own. O Holy Night!
(773) Bill & Gloria Gaither - O Holy Night (Live) ft. David Phelps - YouTube
As we draw close to the end of this year, one thing we can say is that “2020 was not what anyone expected!” It has been a horrendous year for many amid the virus-and-fear pandemic and the subsequent economic difficulties.
We also know that despite vaccines showing up in our areas, 2020 will still have a strong hold on the new year. I saw a notice from one of our health districts outlining the distribution of the vaccines and announcing that “masks will still be required well into the summer of 2021.” Well, that is a pleasant thought.
Our nation is also divided on the handling of this virus-and-fear pandemic. We are mad at the politicians that tell us to do one thing and then do the total opposite. We are dismayed by the various and often differing opinions of science. We are distrustful of the media which seems to twist facts until they are unrecognizable.
In 2 Kings 4:8-37 we find the story of Elisha and the Shunammite woman. Through Elisha God granted this barren woman a son, but then the day came when her son suffered what appears to be a heat stroke and died. The Shunammite woman asks her husband to allow her to go to Elisha. When the husband asks why, her reply is “It is well.” When she reaches Elisha, he also questions her about the reason for her visit and her reply is the same, “It is well.” [v23, 26b NKJV]
We know the end of the story—that Elisha returned with her to her home and she received the greatest of all miracles when her dead son was brought back to life.
No matter what 2020 has brought into our lives, because of our relationship with Christ Jesus our Savior and LORD, we, like the Shunammite woman, can claim, “It is well.”
Below is a link to that wonderful song, “It is Well with My Soul,” sung by Wintley Phipps. He prefaces the song with an amazing word from God that we can take to heart in 2020 AND in 2021.
“It is in the quiet crucible of your personal, private sufferings, that your noblest dreams are born, and God’s greatest gifts are given in compensation for what you’ve been through.”
(773) Wintley Phipps – It Is Well With My Soul [Live] – YouTube
One of the most precious chapters in all the Gospels is Luke 15, the chapter of the lost and found. All the sinners and tax collectors were flocking to Jesus, which angered the religious leaders. So, Jesus reminded them of how it is to be lost. He gave three stories, the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son, which we know as the “Prodigal Son.”
I do not know if you have ever been a prodigal, lost, alone, desperate, hungry. I do not know if you have stood outside the Presence of God and wondered if you would be welcomed in the Father’s House. Would He accept you as you come to Him in sorrow and repentance? Would He welcome you with open arms as the Prodigal Son’s Father did in the story Jesus told? Would there be a feast in your honor?
Or would He reject you, spurn you, disregard you as the Prodigal’s older brother did to Him?
We know that God so loved us that He sent His very own Son to save us. When we come to the door of the Father’s House through Christ Jesus in sorrow and repentance, we are welcomed and treasured by Him. God Himself, in human flesh, paid the ultimate price for us, He will not reject us when we come to Him.
Unfortunately, too often, the church behaves more like the Prodigal’s older brother than she does the Father. Too often we reject our wounded, drive them from our presence with our attitudes and arrogance. But God expects the church to be as loving, compassionate, and welcoming to prodigals as He is. We would do well to remember our own acceptance despite our sinful pasts.
One of my favorite videos is the one of Michael English (read his story in “The Prodigal Comes Home: My Story of Failure and God’s Story of Redemption”) returning to sing with Christians who could have rejected him but did not. He was welcomed back.
What a great time this Christmas to reach out to prodigals and remind them they are missed and loved.
(773) Michael English - Lord, Feed Your Children [Live] - YouTube
One day Jesus was preparing His disciples for His departure. He told them in John 14 that there were many dwelling places in His Father’s House and when He left them (through His death on the cross and subsequent resurrection and ascension), He would come back again for them. He told them “You know the way to where I am going.” [John 14:4 HCSB]
It was then that Thomas spoke up and asked a question – probably a question that all were thinking but only He was bold enough to ask. “Lord, we don’t know where You’re going. How can we know the way?” [vs 5]
I am so thankful for Thomas’ boldness to speak up because Jesus’ response to that question has given hope and assurance to multitudes throughout every generation. “Jesus told him, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.’” [vs 6]
Jesus is “the” way to the Father, the “only way” to the Father. He was quite clear that “no one” comes except through Him. (Either He was telling the truth, or He was not. And if He was not, then there is no hope, no assurance of salvation.) Of course, the resurrection proved Christ was not just telling the truth, but is The Truth.
It is in Christ alone that our hope is based. He alone is our source of everything – the fullness of God in human flesh. He is our way, He is our truth, He is our life.
I rejoice today, not in my efforts, not in my goodness, not in my works, but in Christ alone.
(773) The Booth Brothers - In Christ Alone (Medley) [Live] - YouTube
I got an email this past week requesting volunteers for a live nativity in our area. It has been cold these past few weeks, so I am not sure if they got all the volunteers needed. I know it is too cold for me to spend hours outside, and I doubt there were any old women in the stall that first Christmas anyway.
But then again, as I thought more about that, maybe there were. Maybe Joseph found a mid-wife or a woman nearby to help. Or maybe, he did not. We are not told a lot about how the birth of Jesus took place, just the where and the why.
It is that why that always amazes me at this time of year. Jesus came to set us free from sin and death. The Scriptures are abundantly clear that mankind got itself in a mess – a mess that only God could fix. God made a way.
Last Sunday in church we sang a Christmas song with one line that has played through my mind every night this week. “He made a way in a manger, a way through the cross ….”
The manger is nothing without the cross, the resurrection, and ascension of Christ Jesus to the right hand of the Father. Christ Jesus made the way for us. Through His cross and resurrection, He overcame death and the grave. He made us alive with Him, forgave us all our sins, erased our debt, and opened the way to the Father’s House. Christmas is all about the cross.
“And when you were dead in trespasses and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive with Him and forgave us all our trespasses. He erased the certificate of debt, with its obligations, that was against us and opposed to us, and has taken it out of the way by nailing it to the cross.” [Colossians 2:13-14 HCSB]
(773) the Ball Brothers - It's About the Cross (OFFICIAL video) - YouTube
It is one week to Christmas 2020. It may not be the Christmas celebration we planned on, family may be missing, we may be isolated at home. But it is the remembrance celebration of just how much God loves us. Nothing can change that!
As we approach these next few days, I want to listen to music. Some will be Christmas music; some will not be the typical songs we have attributed to this holiday season. But each one tells us a story of God’s love and is tied to God’s Precious Son coming to us.
Perhaps the most beloved of the modern Christmas carols is “Mary, Did You Know?” written by Mark Lowry. It asks the profound question of just how much Mary understood about this Babe she nursed.
She knew what the angel told her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore, the holy One to be born will be called the Son of God.” [Luke 1:35 HCSB]
But did she know that this was God Incarnate, Immanuel, God with us? Did she know that this Holy One was the Great I Am?
She did know that a miracle had taken place in His conception. And we know that she kept these things in her heart and pondered on them. Maybe that was enough.
Mark Lowry, Guy Penrod, David Phelps - Mary, Did You Know? [Live] - Bing video
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) wrote a poem entitled, “Christmas Bells.” It was turned into a song with which we all are familiar. Longfellow wrote the poem as a 57-year-old widowed father of six children, the oldest of which had been wounded and nearly paralyzed in the Civil War. The poem captures the conflict in his heart.
He heard the bells on Christmas ringing from his home in Cambridge, he knew the promise of the angels in Luke 2:14 of “peace on earth,” but what he saw around him was a world of injustice and violence.
Like the psalmists of old, he wrestles with what he sees in this world, and what God has promised. I think we might have thought the same thoughts in this difficult year. But like the psalmists of old, Longfellow remembers that God shall prevail. Reading Christmas Bells this morning gave me hope … I pray it does the same for you.
I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Till ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime,
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
And in despair I bowed my head;
“There is no peace on earth,” I said;
“For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men.”