May the presence of Christ fill you with joy this Christmas.
Be blessed
Keith
Happy Christmas
Month: December 2020
ReCaptcha
Visitors to our web-site, and indeed to other web sites, may have noticed this ReCaptcha logo on its pages.
Like just about every web site on the planet, we have at times been inundated by spam where automated computer scripts known as bots try to automatically fill in forms to send marketing messages to web site owners, for whatever nefarious purpose they think it might achieve.
For some time, web site operators have used various methods to try to filter out the bots and ensure that only humans fill in the forms. Some of these methods include distorted letters, questions easily answered by humans but less so by computers (e.g. “what is the third word in this list?”), or my favourite: “tick this box if you are not a robot.”
The latest version is v. 3 which requires no human interaction at all. It sits in the background analysing the page clicks and interactions with the page to try to work out whether the user is likely to be a person. Bots are rejected and people are allowed through. If there is a grey area, a challenge screen is opened to try to confirm the identity of the user.
No doubt, a v. 4 will be needed soon as the arms race between web sites and invasive bots continues.
Reflection on Matthew 1:18-25
Scripture
When Joseph woke up, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded, and took Mary as his wife.
Observation
Joseph and Mary are engaged, but Mary becomes pregnant through the power of the Holy Spirit. Joseph is a good man, and he does not want to shame Mary publicly, so he decides to break the engagement quietly.
An angel appears to Joseph in a dream. The angel tells Joseph that Mary’s pregnancy is by the Holy Spirit. The baby is to be named Jesus as He will save His people from their sins.
So Joseph does what the angel told him to do, and he takes Mary as his wife.
Application
It must have been a huge shock and disappointment to Joseph to find out that his wife- to- be had been unfaithful to him. Then an angel appeared to tell him that all was not as it seemed.
The simple faith of both Mary and Joseph is instructive to us. They both just humbly obey God, regardless of the social norms and the possible consequences. They must have had many questions, but they moved forward in obedience.
When God calls us to do something, He has the consequences in hand. He will make it all work out according to His plans.
When we say “No” to God, we are effectively saying that we know better than He does. We know how to handle our lives and don’t need any directions from the Creator of the Universe.
Faith is the admission that we don’t have our lives perfectly ordered.
Faith is recognising that there may be a higher and better way that we have never considered.
Faith is saying “Yes” to God.
Prayer
Thank you Lord for the example of Mary and Joseph. Please help me to always say “Yes” to you. Amen.
POTD
Ephesians 4:2
Here is my commentary on Ephesians 4:2 . I am publishing these once or twice a week, but you can read all of the available articles at our web-site, http://www.new-life.org.au
Ephesians 4:2
“Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.”
Paul now list some of the characteristics of a life lived in accordance with the calling that we have received in Christ. In this verse, we have some qualities that Christians are supposed to exhibit towards one another, qualities that work positively to building up a community of faith.
Humility is an attitude in which we seek to glory in other people rather than ourselves. In Philippians 3:3, Paul exhorts us to “do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility consider others as more important than yourself.”
Humility is the rare ability to assess honestly our own gifts and limitations. CS Lewis used the analogy of a painter who rejoice is in an artwork regardless of whether it was his own or somebody else’s .
Every christian is a unique creation. We all have different gifts, different willingness to use those gifts, and different ways of expressing those gifts. We are at varying levels of spiritual, emotional, and physical maturity. How can I in any truthful way decide that I am in some way better or more spiritual than another person?
Humility is the way of Jesus – a life marked by serving rather than being served.
Paul says we should be gentle.
Gentleness is the ability to control strength in such a way as to build people up rather than pulling them apart. A parent is gentle with a baby or young child, because they know that the baby is fragile and will be injured if they throw her or stomp on her.
Gentleness is the ability to see the preciousness of another believer and to moderate our words or actions so as not to cause harm .
There are people who have shared my life for decades, with whom I can be direct and tell them exactly what I think. With other people, I need to be careful to use words that encourage, words that coax strength rather than fear.
In gentleness, I take a mental step out of my body and imagine what my words or actions will do to another person. I am not always good at this, but as gentleness is part of the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22 23), I trust that over time the Holy Spirit is developing this in me.
We are to be patient with other people (or long suffer as older translations put it).
Patience is the ability to wait without anxiety, and to trust that the desired outcome will arrive in its time .
Patience is a fruit of faith as we learn that God provides what we need at the right time. In the same way, He develops in people in His time the potential that we might see now.
Patience is at odds with our culture in many ways. We are surrounded by devices that do things faster; we can buy fast food or heat up precooked meals in minutes in a microwave; we expect instant communication and rapid responses to our wants.
God requires us to be patient because now is not always the right time.
Farmers cannot shorten the time it takes to make a crop – although plant breeders can. Mothers cannot shorten pregnancy .
We always need to recognise that in any collection of believers, some have not been on the journey for as long as we have. Others may face barriers to spiritual growth that we cannot imagine. Others just bloom slowly.
We have to be patient with one another, because God is patient with us.
To bear with one another does not mean that we tolerate them with gritted teeth. Bearing with one another does not mean that we summon enough self-control to not slap that annoying person.
To bear with them means that we recognise their different personalities and quirky ways, and love them regardless.
That person who irritates me with their continual chatter, or that person who is always boasting about their sporting ability, may be the very person who has the ability and time to fix my plumbing problem. They may be the very person that God has sent into my life to teach me love and empathy .
Bearing with other people means learning to see and appreciate who they are as a person uniquely created by God and loved by him .
Over all of these things comes love. This is agape love, God’s perfect love. It is love that makes it possible for the church to exist as the reflection of God’s love for the world.
It is because I have experienced the perfect love of God that I can become a channel of love to others and received their love in return.
We can not bear with others or exercise patience, humility, and gentleness unless God’s love is at work in us. This is the mystery of the church – that people of diverse abilities, backgrounds, personalities, and interests should be united in one body because of the love of Christ.
Key points in this verse:
- We are to be humble and gentle with one another
- We have to put the needs and the weaknesses of others ahead of our own inclinations
- Humility is the way of Jesus
- We are to be patient with one another and bear with one another
- We cannot hurry up God’s work in other people
- Love is the gift from God that enables us to love others, especially those who on the surface a different to us
Reflection on Luke 2:8-20
Scripture
The angel reassured them. “Don’t be afraid,” he said. “I bring good news that will bring great joy to all people. The Saviour- yes the Messiah, the Lord- has been born today in Bethlehem, the city of David.”
Observation
An angel from the Lord appears to some shepherds minding their sheep near to Bethlehem. The angel tells them that the Messiah, the Saviour has been born. They will recognise Him when they see a baby lying in a manger.
A vast host of angels appears, praising God.
The shepherds decide to go and find out what is going on. They find Mary and Joseph with the baby lying in the manger.
So the shepherds tell everyone they see about what has happened.
Application
Shepherds don’t get angelic visitations- unless they have been drinking too much! How odd that the first witnesses to the coming of the Lord should be people of such ill repute.
Imagine if the local drug dealers were the people to see the angels.
These shepherds must have been wondering themselves how they came to be in this position. A whole army of angels. A tiny baby in a manger. The Messiah! The Lord!
The rulers didn’t see it! The priests didn’t see it! The religious leaders failed to understand it!
It was the shepherds who saw this thing.
This is encouraging for all of us. We don’t get overlooked by God because we don’t fit the picture of people’s expectations.
Any one of us can receive a revelation that will win nations to Christ.
It could be me.
It could be today.
Prayer
Almighty God, you reveal yourself to shepherds and princes alike. Please help me to see you and to know your presence. Amen.
POTD
A Catastrophic Betrayal: Carson Weitnauer
This is a very sad story about the ministry of a Great Apologist and Champion of the Christian faith. I am very saddened by these reports and reminded that we are all just one step from catastrophic sin.
A Catastrophic Betrayal
The “Greatest Apologist” was the Greatest Fraud
As a young man with a passionate love for Jesus, many of my dearest family and friends asked me difficult questions about Christianity. Because of these conversations, I felt compelled to resolve existential questions. Perhaps my supposed faith in God was no more than an outdated fairytale? Due to these pressures, I constantly studied and discussed apologetics with mentors and friends.
I was excited when I had the opportunity to personally meet Ravi Zacharias at a Christmas dinner in high school. After all, his book Can Man Live Without God? had persuaded me that atheism was an untenable position. I subsequently wrote to Ravi for guidance while studying philosophy at Rhodes College and I visited his international ministry’s offices when I studied abroad at St. Catherine’s College, Oxford. Throughout ten years of campus ministry, including seven years serving students at Harvard University, I often pointed to Ravi Zacharias. As a globe-trotting intellectual who persuaded elite leaders to place their faith in Jesus, he was an inspiration.
When my family moved from Boston to Atlanta in 2013, I was thrilled to begin working at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries. Working closely with gifted apologists, I thanked God for the impact of Ravi’s growing ministry on audiences throughout the world. Serving together with so many passionate evangelists, I celebrated near-daily reports of those whose lives were being transformed by the gospel.
In August 2017, the ministry team at RZIM was informed that a greedy couple in Canada had identified Ravi as a target for extortion – and felt no scruples in falsely accusing Ravi. Taking advantage of his friendly, even naïve, approach to people, they had conspired together to defraud him of millions of dollars. Through prayer meetings and regular updates on these “Satanic attacks,” we managed to get through this trial with renewed unity and commitment to our mission.
As we sometimes heard troubling details that suggested Ravi was guilty of what he had been accused of, it was a relief to hear that his incriminating emails were taken out of context, that exculpatory material had been reviewed by the board, and that his courageous RICO lawsuit had put an end to their falsehoods with a non-disclosure agreement. We gave thanks that Ravi’s bold leadership had freed us to focus once more on the ministry God had called us to. Convinced of this narrative, I served at RZIM with great passion and joy, and then wept and grieved for weeks when Ravi’s health unexpectedly declined, followed by his death in May of 2020.
However, in September 2020, new evidence surfaced about Ravi’s relationship with Lori Anne Thompson. As I studied this information carefully – again and again and again – it slowly dawned on me that Ravi had personally and repeatedly lied to me and others in the ministry about his relationship with her. If true, it revealed that his RICO lawsuit was a malicious attempt to bully his victim into silence, and that Ravi had perjured himself in the effort.
More humbling and embarrassing was the realization that the public evidence was sufficient for me to have pieced together the truth in 2017. Anyone who has taken pride in their association with Ravi, and especially those who like me work at RZIM, will now experience that as a shame. I confess that my longing for the approval of others kept me from asking hard questions and accepting the painful truth much sooner. The way forward is to lament the betrayal, confess any complicity, receive the honor of being God’s beloved children, and resolve to live with a chastened faithfulness.
Just as I was awakening to an accurate understanding of the abuse uncovered in 2017, another bombshell came: credible, carefully researched reports appeared in Christianity Today and WORLD magazines, demonstrating that Ravi had committed criminal sexual abuse against at least three massage therapists in the mid-to-late-2000s. The reporting shared the testimony from multiple women, corroborated by their co-workers, from women who had nothing to gain from reliving these awful experiences and were not seeking to win monetary restitution through the courts. If true, these allegations suggest that Ravi’s abuse of Lori Anne Thompson wasn’t an isolated affair, but rather part of an ingrained pattern of life stretching over a decade or more. His constant traveling, especially overseas, now seemed ripe with foreboding possibilities.
Read the rest of the article here
Reflection on Luke 2:1-7
Scripture
And while they were there, the time came for her baby to be born. She gave birth to her first-born child, a son. She wrapped him in strips of cloth and laid him in a manger because there was no lodging available for them.
Observation
The Roman Emperor Augustus decrees that a census must be taken across the Empire. Everyone must go back to their ancestral town to be registered. Joseph and Mary travel to Bethlehem, the city of David.
While they are there, Mary’s baby is born. She wraps him in strips of cloth and lays him in a manger.
Application
God’s plans never pan out as we might expect them to. Even a theological degree is no guarantee of insight into the ways of the Lord. The scribes and all the learned men of Israel knew the prophecies about the Messiah, but even they missed Him.
Jesus, the Son of God, becomes flesh and He establishes His Kingdom in the world. This Kingdom is nothing like the kingdoms and empires of this world.
There is a hint of this in the fact that His birthplace seems to be dictated by the whims of the Emperor. In this first power play between Jesus and the world, it seems that the world is stronger- until you remember the ancient prophecy that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem.
Mary and Joseph did the parenting thing as parents have done for millennia. It is all so humble and ordinary.
How could this baby in a manger possibly be the Son of God who defeats all the kingdoms of the world and even the power of evil?
Prayer
Lord, you chose to come to us in weakness and humility, as a child. The all-powerful God comes in such a tiny package. Holy Spirit, please help me to understand the mystery of Christmas. Amen.
POTD
New Life Narrabri 