Intentional Encouragement

Two of the books that I've read in the past year or so have challenged me deeply. The first was David Platt's book "Radical." I read it a year ago and it's call is still with me. Among the things that I gathered from the book was the reminder of the passion we need to have in our commitment to Christ. The Bible leaves no room for half-hearted Christianity. Then I led our College and Career group through a study of Francis Chan's "Crazy Love" this year.  It was the same general theme. As I came to the new year in 2011, I was thinking about Revelation 3. The words were to the church at Laodicea, but are certainly fitting for us...I thought I'd share some of it with you again today. Most of us are familiar with the "lukewarm" part of the text; God doesn't want us lukewarm. The text says he would rather we be hot or cold. Obviously God doesn't want us to be cold, but have you thought recently about the idea that even a

     It's Christmas Eve.  I thought I'd share a couple of thoughts with you that I plan to talk about tomorrow morning in our worship service.      Christmas is wonderful.  We very much enjoy each other's generosity as well as that of many of our friends and extended family.   Gift giving is fun as we have the opportunity to share things with each other and watch their reaction while they open the gift.   Most of the time, a simple "thank you" will suffice for what we receive.   People give to us for the joy of giving and because they love us. They expect no thanks, they just want to express themselves to us.   Other times, people are so generous that it takes us by surprise.   Did you ever receive a gift from someone and your immediate reaction was something along the lines of "I don't know what to say?"       We have talked often throughout this season about God's gift to us in the person of Jesus, but I spent a bit of time meditating on Pau

      “… [Jesus] did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing…” (Philippians 2:6b-7a, ESV)       I'm still mulling over those verses this week and I want to challenge you to remember something as you move toward Christmas Day. When Jesus came here to earth, there was no advantage in it for Him.       Jesus is God in every respect: power…authority…wisdom…eternality…everything about Him is God. There is no one else like the Lord Jesus. He was fully God and fully man. It is beyond my finite ability to understand.       With all of that being true, think about the magnitude of what He did in coming to earth. According to Philippians chapter 2, Jesus veiled his majesty as God and came to earth taking on the nature of humanity. He didn’t stop being God, but He did choose not to exercise His rights and the prerogatives of deity in many cases. Even further than that, He headed straight to the cross from the moment He arrived on plane

     I wrote this last Christmas, but the challenge of it is still with me.      I have been meditating on Paul’s description in Philippians 2:5-8 of what happened at Christmas.    Here's how the ESV translates it:   “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”   We call this the incarnation. Jesus took on humanity; he became flesh; became one of us.      I am astonished at the extent to which Christ went to bring the message of God’s truth into the world. Jesus is eternally God and the essence of who he was didn’t change when he came to earth.   He veiled and limited the exercise his divine essence, setting aside his “rights” as God and c

            It seems each year, as my mind is drawn back to those days so long ago when our Savior was born, that I find myself immersed once again in some “sanctified speculation.” I wonder just how the individuals that we read about in the Biblical account must have felt during the experience that we now call history.             The shepherds are on my mind today, and one particular point keeps resurfacing in my thinking.  The text states this: “And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night.”  That seems simple enough.  Here is the thought that keeps coming back to me, though:  They were going about their regular, daily activities when the message of "Christmas" invaded their lives.  Later on in the Biblical record, we read that "the shepherds returned…"  After it was all over they went back to their daily lives, doing the same old thing with the same old sheep!  Isn’t that how it is too often?  We knock ou