Jesus Is in the World Not of It

The Beatitudes offer us a self-portrait of Jesus.  At first it might seem to be a most unappealing portrait - who wants to be poor, mourning and persecuted?  Who can be truly gentle, merciful, pure in heart, a peacemaker, and always concerned about justice?  Where is the realism here?  Don't we have to survive in this world and use the ways of the world to do so?

Jesus shows us the way to be in the world without being of it.  When we model our lives on his, a new world will open up for us.  The Kingdom of Heaven will be ours, and the earth will be our inheritance.  We will be comforted and have our fill; mercy will be shown to us.  Yes, we will be recognised as God's children and truly see God, not just in an afterlife, but here and now  (see Matthew 5:3-10).   That is the reward of modelling our lives on the life of Jesus!

Shut Up and Listen

Written by Meryl Herr at Today's Christian Woman

"What miserable comforters you are!"

She never actually uttered those words, but her eyes shouted them from behind her tears. She had just laid her soul bare telling us about her recent miscarriage. The silence afterward lasted only a moment before those around her erupted in a chorus of "Trust God—everything will work out," and immediate quotations of Jeremiah 29:11.

I really wanted to cheer up my brokenhearted friend, but how could I avoid adding to the chorus of trite clichés? I had no idea what to do or say.

Ever been there? When we see someone downcast, we want encourage them with meaningful, restorative words. True encouragement, though, is a tall order. It requires more than a pithy quip and pat on the back. So what are we to do?

Close your mouth and open your ears

When we encourage someone, our words need to fit their situation. Therefore, we need to begin by really hearing what the situation is. One day an acquaintance asked me about my new job and I told her about the difficult day I had … or, to be more accurate, I tried to tell her. After every few words, she butted in with some advice or a not-so-winsome "You just need to …" suggestion. She didn't hear me. All I wanted to do was yell, "Shut up and listen!" As a result of her "encouragement," I felt frustrated and unloved.

When a hurting friend opens up about a struggle or crisis, we have to stop talking in order to hear them well. In addition to closing our mouths, we also need to turn off the imaginary conversation playing in our heads as we listen. If we're preoccupied with planning what to say to them next, we can miss hearing their story. We ought to take this good advice fromThe message paraphrase of James 1:19: "Lead with your ears, follow up with your tongue."

When we're encouraging someone who's hurting, sometimes we won't ever make it past this step of listening. That's okay! Our silence isn't failure. Sometimes the ministry of our presence is exactly what the other person needs most.

Don't take cues from Job's friends

While the "shut up and listen" tactic can be an effective way to minister to someone who is hurting, we also need to pay attention to what we eventually do say. In Scripture, Job's friends serve as a great example of how not to respond.

Satan afflicted Job with loss of property, family, and personal health in an attempt to prove that Job wasn't as righteous as God said he was. In response to his misery, Job's friends stopped by to encourage their downtrodden friend. In Job 2:13, we read that Job's friends didn't say anything to him at first because they saw how miserable he was. They definitely got the "shut up and listen" part right. They heard Job describe his deep misery: "I have no peace, no quietness. I have no rest; only trouble comes" (Job 3:26). What could they say?

When Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar eventually offered their words of wisdom, they did anything but encourage Job. They were convinced that Job was suffering because of some unrighteousness in his life and they repeatedly told him so.

Job's response to their nonsense? "What miserable comforters you are!" (Job 16:2). Job knew his friends were dwelling too much on the "why" of his calamity instead of giving him courage to face it. Not only that, but Job's friends kept surmising that they knew why Job suffered: God must be punishing him. Job's friends combined bad theology with bad encouragement techniques and simply exasperated their hurting friend.

When we encourage someone, it isn't for us to dwell upon why they are in the midst of their trial or struggle. We simply don't know. God's thoughts and purposes regarding our lives are often far beyond our understanding (Isaiah 55:8-9). Instead of focusing on events that may or may not have contributed to a loved one's painful circumstances, our encouragement should begin with what we know to be true about God.

Three tips to focus on God's sovereign care

1. Remind your friend of God's character, particularly of God's sovereign care, goodness, and love. When your best friend is in a tough spot in her marriage, a text message saying "Philippians 4:13" or "God loves you!" is probably not going to make her feel better. Your friend is smart enough to know those truths. Instead what she needs to hear is God's truth applied well and lovingly to her circumstances. Sincerely reminding your friend that our sovereign God is in fact working even in troubled marriages "for the good of those who love God" (Romans 8:28) can have a remarkable impact.
2. Point to God as one who is attentive to his people's pain. The psalmist declares, "LORD, you know the hopes of the helpless. Surely you will hear their cries and comfort them" (Psalm 10:17). Our God is strong enough to shoulder all of our anxieties and willing to do so because he cares for us (1 Peter 5:7). Scripture is full of examples of God caring for those he loves, even in the midst of difficulty and suffering. We can remind friends of the biblical accounts of the Israelites in Egypt, Ruth the Moabite, King David on the run, Elijah and the ravens, or the apostle Paul in prison.
3. Pour yourself out as a drink offering. Over coffee one night, a friend from seminary encouraged my husband and me with the story of Elisha and the widow in 2 Kings 4:1-7. The widow needed money to pay her dead husband's debts and God provided miraculously more than she owed through a bountiful outpouring of oil. Like us, our friend needed a continual outpouring of God's grace to remain serving in his current ministry while waiting on God to provide new work. This story had been a good reminder to him of God's faithfulness to sustain, so he shared the story with us. Now I return to this story often because of its portrayal of God's bountiful goodness.

Reframe the hardship

Finally, we can encourage hurting friends by helping them see their current trial from a different perspective. The writer of Hebrews says, "Endure hardship as discipline" (Hebrews 12:7). Notice that the verse does not say, "Hardship is discipline." Rather the verse tells us to reframe our struggles by thinking about how God might be training us during them.

James also tells us, "Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy" (James 1:2). James continues by explaining why we should reframe hardship in this way: because God uses hardship to foster faith and perseverance (James 1:3-4). It can be really hard to view a hardship as a reason for joy, but we can find encouragement in remembering that God is working in us in the midst of trouble and pain. The hope of becoming more Christ-like can strengthen our hearts during difficulties.

When helping others reframe their hardship, we must be careful not to project onto a hurting friend what we may have learned or how we have been formed in a particular part of our spiritual journey. For example, God might use unemployment to teach me humility while he might use it to teach my husband the value of work or to teach my friend dependence on God. God writes a different story for each of our lives. I can share my story, but I must not assume it's the only paradigm for how God will work in similar circumstances.

Becoming messengers of salvation

Encouraging one another well takes practice and we must be ready to fail from time to time. Yet, in dependence on the Holy Spirit who equips us for service to others, we can become what Dietrich Bonhoeffer labels "messengers of salvation" to one another. We can speak words that are true and informed by Scripture. We can speak words that actually give life and impart hope to our friends who are feeling down.

We must remember that our God who tells us to encourage one another (1 Thessalonians 5:11) will also give us resources to do it well. By the power of his Spirit, God can multiply the effect that our thoughtful, sincere words can have. "All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is our merciful Father and the source of all comfort. He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us" (1 Corinthians 1:3-4).

Meryl Herr is passionate about adult discipleship in the local church. She is a freelance writer living in Illinois.

Hope Returns When We Remember God's Unfailing Love

“Yet hope returns when I remember this one thing: The Lord's unfailing love and mercy still continue, fresh as the morning, as sure as the sunrise. The Lord is all I have, and so in him I put my hope.” (Lamentations 3:21-24 GNT)

Pain is a natural part of life. You can’t escape it. Broken relationships, missed opportunities, and rough seasons of life will always be with us. When they do come, you can either become bitter or hopeful.

The choice is yours.

Jeremiah faced the same choice. When his world came apart after Jerusalem was sacked in 586 B.C., the prophet wrote the book of Lamentations to share his honest frustrations with God. But he didn’t settle in his bitterness and stay there.

In Lamentations 3:21-24, after sharing his bitter feelings, he wrote, “Yet hope returns when I remember this one thing: The Lord's unfailing love and mercy still continue, fresh as the morning, as sure as the sunrise. The Lord is all I have, and so in him I put my hope” (GNT).

In the midst of a terrible situation, Jeremiah changed his perspective. It’s healthy and good for us to be honest with God about our feelings, but you have to eventually change your perspective. As long as our minds are on our pain, we won’t solve anything.

Instead, like Jeremiah, we need to recognize God’s great love for us. Jeremiah changed his perspective and recognized the enduring mercies of God. No matter what the problem, no matter how much anger you’ve spewed at God, he still loves you. It’s a constant you can depend upon — no matter what.

The longer you focus on what depresses you, the longer your depression will last. Bitterness keeps you caught in your own pain. In Lamentations 3, Jeremiah gives you a simple cure for bitterness: change how you think.

In the midst of a depressing tirade, Jeremiah says, “Yet hope returns …”

How can you have hope even in your darkest days? You remember, “The Lord’s unfailing love and mercy still continue.”

You can count on that! His mercies are as fresh as the morning and as sure as the sunrise. 

Talk About It

• What makes hope a choice when we’re going through troubles?

• What practices can you make a part of your life during difficult times that’ll keep hope at the forefront?

God's faithfulness and ours

When God makes a covenant with us, God says:  "I will love you with an everlasting love.  I will be faithful to you, even when you run away from me, reject me, or betray me."  In our society we don't speak much about covenants;  we speak about contracts.  When we make a contract with a person, we say:  "I will fulfill my part as long as you fulfill yours.  When you don't live up to your promises, I no longer have to live up to mine."  Contracts are often broken because the partners are unwilling or unable to be faithful to their terms.

But God didn't make a contract with us; God made a covenant with us, and God wants our relationships with one another to reflect that covenant.  That's why  marriage, friendship, life in community are all ways to give visibility to God's faithfulness in our lives together.

Obeying God Requires Taking a Risk

“After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, ‘Get up, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who were trying to take the child’s life are dead.’” (Matthew 2:19-20 NIV)

As uncomfortable as it was for Joseph to move his family to Egypt, imagine how scary it would be for him to obey God’s command to come back to Israel. It was like going back into the jaws of the lion. He was going to take Mary and Jesus back to where his son’s life had been in danger. But because Joseph trusted God and what he was saying, Joseph took the risk and went there because he knew that was the right place to be.

The Bible says, “Even when I am afraid, I keep on trusting you” (Psalm 56:3 CEV). Notice this verse says, “when I am afraid” not “if I am afraid.” We may want a life of no fears in this world, but that only happens in Heaven. In this life, we’re all going to face fears of one kind or another.

We have some big fears and some little fears. We fear the future, what’s going to happen with our jobs, our family, and we fear little things like whether we said the right thing to someone, whether that presentation went well, even fear of making a phone call.

In all of these situations, you have a choice to make. Are you going to let the fear control you, or are you going to take a risk of faith because you know you have a God who loves you?

That risk of faith could mean going someplace you’ve never been before or forgiving someone you thought you couldn’t forgive. It could mean leaving your job. A risk of faith could also be praying about something or deciding to trust God with a situation or a relationship you’ve held tight in your hand.

Talk About It

• What Christ-like risk is God telling you to take in faith?

(Written by Tom Holladay)

To Obey God, Let Go

“When the wise men had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. ‘Get up,’ he said, ‘take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.’ So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod.” (Matthew 2:13-15a NIV)

Joseph and Mary had to let a lot of things go because of their faith journey. They left everything they knew when they headed to Egypt. And, in one sense, what they were sacrificing was their comfort at the deepest level.

It is often uncomfortable to trust God and follow his plan because we get comfortable with the wrong things. We get comfortable with our little habits and rituals, the things that get us stuck where we are instead of getting us to where God wants to grow us.

If you commit your health to God, it will probably mean giving up some of your favorite foods. If you commit your finances to God, it will probably mean cutting back on your spending.

It’s uncomfortable to break a habit. It’s uncomfortable to face a fear. It’s uncomfortable to go somewhere you’ve never been before or forgive someone who has hurt you. But growth and change always come through doing those uncomfortable things, and that’s what’s good in it.

But if we don’t face those fears, we continue to hold onto something that makes us feel comfortable and end up turning our back on God who is the source of comfort.

The Bible says, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort” (2 Corinthians 1:3 NIV).

I invite you this Christmas, like never before, to recognize that God is the God of all comfort. And in those moments when you want to turn back to that old habit, that old way of thinking which pulls you off track, turn to God and say, “God, give me your comfort.”

Talk About It

• What act of obedience have you put off because of your fear or discomfort?

• Pray for God’s comfort and courage to move you out of complacency and into obedience.

(Written by Tom Holladay)

You Obey God by Trusting God

“But Joseph had no union with her until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.” (Matthew 1:25 NIV)

Some people are good at the immediate. They can jump right into anything, but they are not good at “keeping on keeping on.” And other people are good at lasting, but it takes them a long time to get there.

To live the exciting life of faith that God has planned for you, you need to be good at both the immediate and the lasting — and both of those require that you keep on trusting.

Joseph didn’t understand what it meant for Jesus to have a virgin birth; he didn’t understand Jesus would be God in human flesh. But he knew what God told him to do, so Joseph kept on trusting. He was a newlywed who didn’t get a honeymoon, and his new marriage was not anything like he planned, but he still kept trusting.

What are you going to do when life doesn’t work out like you planned or wanted?

I am always encouraged by what the apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:8: “We are pressed on every side by troubles, but not crushed and broken. We are perplexed because we don’t know why things happen as they do, but we don’t give up and quit” (LB).

I don’t know why some people are diagnosed with terminal cancer. I don’t know why some children rebel so strongly against their parents. I don’t know why so many things happen that don’t make sense. So it’s encouraging to hear one of the greatest men of faith say, “I don’t know why things happen as they do, but I still choose to not give up.”

It’s good to know that we can trust God and that he knows things we don’t. He has promised that one day he will set everything right. One day he will bring everyone who trusts in him together.

Until then, there are two ways you can live your life. You can live feeling like God owes you an explanation, or you can live realizing God has given you great gifts.

If you live life feeling like God owes you an explanation, you will only wind up in a constant state of bitterness, because God doesn’t owe you anything.

But even though he doesn’t owe you anything, he has given you everything. He gave you his own Son. He gave you the gift of eternal life. He gave you the promise of being together with him forever. Those are great gifts.

Talk About It

• In what situation is God asking you to trust him, even though it doesn’t make sense to you?

• Paul may seem far from an ordinary man. In what ways can you relate to him? How are you encouraged by his trust in God?

(Written by Tom Holladay)

Give Thanks, for God Is at Work

“Another one of his disciples, Andrew, who was Simon Peter's brother, said, ‘There is a boy here who has five loaves of barley bread and two fish. But they will certainly not be enough for all these people.’” (John 6:8-9 TEV)

We’ve been talking about how our ability to give thanks to God is based on our ability to see his involvement in our lives and to understand things do not come to us through coincidence.

Was it a coincidence that Andrew met this specific boy among the crowd listening to Jesus? Was it a coincidence that the boy had “five loaves of barley bread and two fish”? And are we any different from Andrew in that he looked at the bigness of the problem instead of looking at the bigness of Jesus?

Here’s one more God-story to help you focus today on the many ways God provides for you. When I sold my home for a huge loss, I knew what was left was “certainly not enough” to even rent a one-bedroom apartment. Surely this was even too big for God.

And then God connected me with friends of friends. David and Susan Moffitt had moved to a new home and not sold their old one. They were letting someone live in the house, but that person would be leaving soon, and Susan suggested I drive by to see if I’d be interested in living there. She said, “It’s a little rough, but if any house has character, this one has it.”

So I drove through a neighborhood of older, upscale homes, down a street lined with trees, creating the kind of entrance effect you might find as you enter the grounds to an old Southern college. At the end of the road, I could see a white house with a white picket fence. It looked as if it was sitting in the middle of the road, but, as I got closer, I could see it was a visual effect because the road took a sharp turn to the right just in front of the house.

The Moffitt house was the last holdout from the parceled progress that turned a plantation and some farms into just another neighborhood. It was an old 1940s farmhouse sitting like a two-acre oasis in the middle of suburbia. I pulled into the dirt driveway and drove up to the front, next to the white picket fence.

Just as I stopped the car, three deer walked out from behind a large hedge and stood a few feet away from me. And — I kid you not — right on cue, Amy Grant’s version of “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” started playing on the radio.

Later, I called Susan and told her I’d like to talk about moving into the house. I hesitated and then asked, “How much are you planning to charge?” She said, “Oh, we weren’t planning to charge anything. We’re glad if we can bless you.”

Talk About It

• How has God provided for you this year?

• Ask God to show you the things in the last year that you’ve written off as coincidence but were actually God at work in your life.

• Give thanks, for God Is at work in your life!

(Written by Jon Walker)

Does God Answer Specific Prayers?

“All eyes look to You, and You give them their food at the proper time. You open Your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing.” (Psalm 145:15-16 HCSB)

The distinction between coincidence and God’s activity in your life is important because it will affect your ability to thank God for the many things he provides. If you think in terms of coincidence as opposed to God’s activity in your life, you will miss the truth that God is providing for your every need.

Let me give you an example of one way God deepened my faith in this area. Because I have bipolar II disorder and also live alone, my doctor encouraged me to get a dog. Feeding and walking a dog helps build structure and routine into the day. But I was at a place in my life where I wasn’t sure I could afford a dog, especially the shots and veterinarian visits that would be required.

But I went ahead and asked God to provide me with a dog. I love dogs and have had several, so I was specific in my prayer. “Father, I am grateful for what you can provide but this is what I’d like:

• One that is hypoallergenic, because I am allergic to dogs that shed. I’d really like a cockapoo — a cross between a cocker spaniel and poodle.
• One that is older and already trained.
• One that is female, because my last dog was a very territorial male.
• One that is around 30 pounds.
• One that I can afford to keep.”

I found a rescue dog that seemed to fit my criteria at a place just around the corner from my house. But, when I walked the dog around for a while, there just didn’t seem to be a connection. When I brought the dog back in to the rescue center, the woman at the front desk asked, “What are you looking for?”

I said, “I really was hoping to find a cockapoo.”

She said there was someone who had recently called about a cockapoo. She gave me a card and said, “Give this woman a call and see if she has the right dog for you.”

I called Laura West, who owned Pumpkin, a 4-year-old female cockapoo who weighed around 30 pounds and was current on all her shots. When I asked her how much she wanted for Pumpkin, she said, “I just want her to have a good home!”

I told Laura how I’d prayed specifically for this dog. Was it a coincidence that I just happened to walk into the rescue looking for a dog at the same time Laura, who is also a believer, had called the rescue about Pumpkin?

I think Pumpkin is my God dog, and so I can say with confidence that God is working to meet your needs as well. Thank God, from whom all blessings flow!

Talk About It

• What is a way God has provided for you this past year?

• What are the things for which you have to be thankful?

(Written by Jon Walker)