Houstonisms

off limits = off lemons

shin guards = shin gardens

Piper tweet

God never does only one thing. In everything he does he is doing thousands of things. Of these we know perhaps half a dozen.

timely? always.

i love this post on John Piper's blog, especially this summary at the end (emphasis mine):

The Holy Family's first few years were not tranquil. They were filled with grueling travel during the hardest part of pregnancy, a birth in worse than a barn, no steady income, an assassination attempt, two desert crossings on foot with an infant, living in a foreign country, waiting on God for guidance and provisions just in the nick of time. It was difficult, expensive, time-consuming, career-delaying and full of uncertainty.

And it was God's will.

The unplanned, inefficient detours of our lives are planned by God. They are common for disciples, and they commonly don't make sense in the moment. But God's ways are not our ways because our lives are about him, not about us. He is orchestrating far more than we know in every unexpected event and delay.

So when you find yourself suddenly moving in a direction you had not planned, take heart, hold tight, and trust God's navigation.

Advent

Confession: Christmas was never my favorite holiday. The commercialization fueled my celebratory paralysis. The wonder of Jesus' birth was almost completely lost on my self-righteous refusal to get too excited about a holiday that most people associated with a bearded man in a red suit. Praise the Lord because He did not leave me there!

Now I'm the one who leaves Christmas music on my playlists all year long and chooses to listen as soon as Halloween ends. If my budget would allow I would buy every advent book and calendar I see.

I try to wrap my mind around it almost every day, but it just never fully happens. God became a man. A baby.

He left the comfort of His throne to lay in hay. I'm allergic to hay. I can imagine how miserable that would have been. He left the blessed intimacy of the Father and the Holy Spirit to be kissed by sinners; kisses of adoration, kisses of betrayal.

He was born to die. He came to suffer and to die. He did many other things in His 33 human years, but if not for death, all else was emptiness.

He was born to rise. All the power of God resided in Bethlehem's neglected treasure. If not for His resurrection, all else was deception.

He was born to fulfill. The Law. The Promise. The people of Israel had waited expectantly for thousands of years, hoping in the coming Messiah. He was righteous, perfection.

He was born to return. One of my favorite Christmas songs, and so fitting for Advent, says,

"Hear the angels as they're singing on the morning of His birth,

But how much greater will our song be when He comes again to earth!"

Come quickly, Lord Jesus!

He was born to be our hope. There is no one greater. No experience more fulfilling than His presence.

He was born to be personal. God had identified Himself to Moses thousands of years earlier: Yahweh, the Lord, I AM. His personal, intimate name. The name that communicates His constant nearness, His intervention in history on behalf of His people. But the name of Jesus is even more personal, our necessity: "Yahweh is salvation." Jesus is the pinnacle of God's deliverance, freedom, promise and power. The very most intimate, intentional expression of love that could ever be communicated.

He was born to send the Holy Spirit. He promised to send the Helper. And now we know intimacy with God; dwelling with Him forever starts at salvation.

So how can I keep from celebrating? There is far too much to celebrate in one short day named "Christmas." Why do I only sing in exultation over Immanuel for one month of the year? I want the joy that the angels announced to characterize my every waking moment. Oh that my heart would prepare room for Him in every day of the year!

And can we talk about Christmas songs for just a minute:

"Come Thou long expected Jesus...

Born Thy people to deliver...

Born to reign in us forever...

By Thine own eternal Spirit

Rule in all our hearts alone

By Thine own sufficient merit (my merit is otherwise hopelessly lacking)

Raise us to Thy glorious throne."

"Long lay the world

In sin and error pining,

Til He appeared

And the soul felt its worth. (God declared that my soul was worth the discomfort of His incarnation)

A thrill of hope,

The weary world rejoices

For yonder breaks

A new and glorious morn'. (mercies new every morning)

Fall on your knees...."

"No more let sins and sorrows grow

Nor thorns infest the ground

He comes to make His blessings flow

Far as the curse is found." (His healing will go forth as far as man's depravity may be found, and that is such a desperate distance)

Joy, unspeakable joy!

God and peer pressure

The disciples did not get it. Simply did not get it.

Peter and the rest of them thought they were on the verge of something huge. They thought they had beat the crowd to the next big thing. And they had. But not at all like what they'd anticipated. They imagined that their relationship to Jesus in the early, less glamorous days was earning them a spot in the inner circle of the government that would overthrow Rome. They figured that any day now Jesus would sit them down for a strategic battle plan meeting, assign positions of authority for as soon as the coup was complete, and send them out to rally the masses. Victory. Luxury. Ease.

Knowing how their stories actually ended, it's easy to think they were just ridiculous. I often take comfort in the fact that they could hear Jesus speak so plainly about the reality of the Kingdom of God and still miss Him so grossly. But really, their expectations were not that crazy. Israel's history was wrought with sin, captivity, restoration, prosperity. God had always sent a deliverer when the people were humbled, and they expected Jesus was the Great Deliverer. He would free them from Rome and establish His never-ending kingdom. The Jewish nation would thrive under their God-King, and the disciples would be there helping to make it happen. What they wanted Jesus to do was really not so outrageous, at least not humanly speaking.

Praise God that He does not need our interpretation of circumstances or our recommendations on the next best course of action! Can we even count the perspectives the disciples simply could not comprehend?

Rome and Israel alike were dominated by sin.

The Pharisees, the Jews and the Gentiles were all equally separated from God.

The animal sacrifices and the intercession of the high priest were not enough to atone for sin.

Jesus, the Son of God, had been pursuing all human hearts since Creation. He left a throne for that cause; He did not come to gain one.

Jesus' entire life was lived in total comprehension of the Father's eternal plan. No detail, no word, no action transpired apart from this knowledge.

What the disciples were looking for was not bad. It could have been a good thing, for Israel at least. Sure, some of their early motivations were questionable, but in their humanity, without the indwelling Holy Spirit, their ideas were not terrible. But compared to the Truth, compared to the greater reality than what they could see, compared to the holiness and magnificent love of God, they were totally lost, in the dark, clueless. And I am so grateful for that.

Thank you, Lord, that you do what you intend to do with or without my understanding or consent. No amount of objection from me can change Your heart, Your plan, Your story. Thank You for listening to me, for having compassion on me, for giving Your attention to the desires and distresses of my heart. But thank You for already having a perfect plan. A plan for Your glory. A plan for my good, for my conformity to the image of Your Son. A plan for salvation, for the redemption of all Your people. Thank You for involving me, but never depending on me. Thank you for letting me learn from You, from Your patient discipleship.

Let my time before You cause radical change in me as it did in Peter.

"And He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again. And He said this plainly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him." Mark 8:31-32

"Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, '...This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.' Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And they recognized that they had been with Jesus." Acts 4:8, 11-13

God is so far beyond peer pressure. There is hope for me.

another piper tweet

We need God in ways we do not know. Don't limit your experience of God to what you can think to ask. Ask for the unknown joy.

piper's twitter quote today

Lord cut, Lord carve, Lord wound, Lord do anything that may perfect the Father's image in us.

Samuel Rutherford