An "Adventual" Christmas!

I love making up my own words.  When there is not a word that describes what I want to communicate it's just easier to make one up.  So here is me wishing you an "Adventual Christmas!"  

If you look at the dates of my blogs you would notice that I am very hit or miss.  The other thing you will notice is that I always tend to blog during Christmas.  I had to ask myself the same question you are.  Why?  It's because I come alive during Christmas.  There is something timeless in Christmas.  Something that awakens in us all when Christmas breaks in.  

Could it be that that rumbling within, is our souls recognition of a season when it seems the timeless spiritual reality bursts into our physical world.  It's like eating the first piece of pumpkin pie of all year served up at thanksgiving.  The mix of spice and cream seem to dance on the tip of your tongue and awake the hibernating memories of a season of joy and life.  

There is no greater moment, perhaps, in the American Calendar where the reality of a Savior can be sensed by all, the believing and the unbelieving, than Christmas time.  I hope you will join me on this blog adventure where the Advent Season become eventual ("Adventual") for you and brings the hope and joy that God's reality in Christ promises us all.  

The Power of Vision!

Check out this Blog by Seth Godin.  Fascinating!

"If you take a group of people, a subgroup of the larger population, and expose them to focused messages again and again, you will start to change their point of view. If you augment those messages with exposure to other members of the group, the messages will begin to have ever more impact.

If the group becomes aligned, and it starts acting like a tribe, those messages will become self-reinforcing. And finally, if you anoint and reward leaders of this tribe, single them out for positive attention because of the way your message resonated with them, it will become fully baked in.

That's a lot of power. Probably too much for the selfish marketer, lobbyist or demagogue to have at his disposal."

Assume! - A key to marriage.

You ever heard the slogan. "When you assume you make a _____ out of you and me." Only partly true. Let me explain. Assumptions that makes us look stupid is when make decisions with not enough or bad information. It's when we fill in the blanks of a story with our own words. The problem is we rarely fill in the blanks correctly because our assumptions are based upon what another is thinking of which we have no ability to know. Those kind of assumptions destroy relationships, especially marriages.

That is why the right assumption is based upon what you know; and that is you. What if in a marriage we would assume it is us and not our spouse. The assumption that it is our spouse with the issue is convenient. I won't lie; it feels better to place the blame on another. Who likes looking into their own heart to see what kind of darkness is actually there. The problem is, that you have no control over the other persons heart or mind. But you do have power. The power you have is influence.

Here is how influence works. Influence is the ability to win the heart and mind of another. You know how you do that. Bible say's, "A new command I give you; Love one another. As I have loved you, so you MUST love one another." Here is the secret to love. It has nothing to do with the other person. It has everything to do with the size and capacity of your heart to love despite. Influence is when you choose to act out of love not matter where we think the blame lies because our goal is not the conflict it is the outcome.

If you want to assume anything, try this. Try assuming not the blame but the responsibility for the success of your marriage. Men; this is a key place you can lead in your homes. Let's put down our pride, our ego's (which are real), and our need to be right for the calling of beautiful marriages. Assuming responsibility means looking inside ourselves for darkness, confessing it to God, then acting toward our spouse's in love. Let your influence grow in their hearts by your ability to be humble, assume responsibility and act in love. Pursue them as God pursued us. Your marriage is not beyond repair (redemption). It starts with you.

Don't stop assuming. Assume more!

Under his Majesty!

God will not quit until all of us is transformed by his grace and his love. That means that every part of us will have to go through the process of reforming under the Majesty of God. This sounds all good except that the process of placing all of our lives under his Sovereignty and Majesty means desserts, valleys, mirrors, and even death.

The story of Moses is that story. Remember Moses key issue that God was constantly trying to bring under his grace and Majesty? It was his anger. Thing is, that it wasn't that Moses anger wasn't righteous. It was. It was how he acted on it. Our first glimpse of it was Moses as a prince of Egypt with a growing awareness of the injustice his people were enduring under the rule of the Egyptions. It erupted one day and the result was a dead Egyption, his own people's distrust of Moses, and his exile.

It was righteous, it just wasn't right. Moses anger had not come under the Majesty of God and he took vengeance into his own hands. But God took Moses on a journey of redemption. A journey of 40 years in the dessert. Even still Moses had not surrendered that area. He gave selflessly like no other figure in the bible minus Jesus. But he still held onto his anger. It is witnessed when his people complaining for water and wishing they were back in Egypt was met by a gracious God but an angry Moses. God asked Moses to speak to the rock and to tell it to produce water but instead out of his Anger Moses strikes the rock. And not just one time but two.

It was actually this act of anger that cost Moses the most. It was this act of anger that cost him the promised land. Moses people saw it but he didn't. This might seem very unfair. Is it. God makes no false declarations. He is after our hearts. Not just part of our hearts but all of our hearts. It means the surrender of all of our life to him.

Sojourners Of The Weird

Did you know if you look up the definition of weird in the dictionary it would say, "involving or suggesting the supernatural; unearthly or uncanny"? Have you ever had someone pop into your mind and felt led to call them or text them to find out they were struggling with something or had you on their mind as well? Weird! Have you ever thought about someone not usually on your mind and then bump into them a day or two later? Weird!!

I sometimes fail to realize the density of the weird though. I can tell you that weird happens to me all the time but if you asked me to give you an example I would have trouble putting my finger on one or two instances. Why is that? Because I don't realize how spiritually dense, how much of the supernatural is packed into the seemingly small weird moments.

Being a Christian means getting very comfortable and even excited about the weird. It means looking for the weird. It means speaking the weird and exploring the weird with others. It means stopping every day and asking God what the weird moments were in the day. It means sounding weird to others. Those who do not know Christ see weird as just that weird never even considering they had experienced a God moment. To them our reality is frightening to them. Think about it. If I told you I prayed for you and because I hear this voice in my head telling me to, you would consider me weird. And according to the definition of weird you would be right.

What if as GraceRiver and even beyond we decided to stop every day this week to look for the weird? What if we decided to realize the density of weird moments and become aware of the supernatural power of Christ intersecting our mundane existence sparking life all around us? What if we became sojourners of the weird this week. Think of one weird friend you can talk to about the weird happenings of your week and celebrate a God who shows up all around us.

And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. - 2 Corinthians 3:18