Room at the inn

Have you ever wondered about the foundation of your beliefs? Have you ever thought about the craziness faith?

Take a moment and think about Christmas...Think about its foundation and what we are asked to believe...

Truth is, this thing called Christianity does not make sense to this world. And why would it? A baby born in a dirty cave because there was no room at the inn, is said to be the Savior of the world. This same baby grows into a man that we are called to follow and emulate even though He does crazy things like walk on water, fraternize with the outcasts, heals the lame and cares for the prostitutes.

This dude that we hail as king was beaten to death - I mean he represents everything that is sooo not American hero - right? No bone crushing did He do - He let them crush Him. No whooping a little a$$ - He allowed them to beat Him to His last breath.

And so at Christmas what is it we celebrate? 

Love... Christmas (like Easter) is the celebration of love... Love incarnate. Yes Christmas is the celebration of the greatest gift given... God Himself...

Immanuel - God with us. At Christmas, God with us is said to us by God Himself, we come under a lordship . . . We come under His Lordship which is bathed in radical love.

In Jesus Christ we understand the Word of God as the epitome of God’s grace. It is a word of radicalness...

Why do Christians do what they do? Why do Christians act in ways deemed crazy and insane by the world?

Because they have been visited by the truth of Christmas... Their hearts have been overwhelmed by the eruption of God's radical love...

And what did they do with this love? They said yes. Radical Christian love happens when there is room at the inn of our hearts... Amen Jesus!

Merry Christmas...

Is there light?

In light of devastation - emotional, physical, spiritual, what is life? In light of pain, turmoil, trouble, what is life? In this life is there light?

Devastation all around seems to dampen the delight of divine beauty.

How it is that we can move into the holidays with hearts filled with good tidings and cheer? Where is our hope?

The complexity of the answer as to where is our hope, is found in the simplicity of what was done some 2000 years ago for the whole of humanity. Birth...death…hope.

Yes, a baby was born so that as a man He might hang on a tree.

One birth. One death. One tree. Three nails. Eternal hope.

Hope is wrapped in the truth of Immanuel - God with us. The only way to engage the happenings of today while seeking to celebrate the truth of life is found in the One who is life.

Jesus came to reign down hope. He came to shower us in joy. And with His entrance on the world stage He gave us the way to respond to the darkness that suffocates life.

Yes, Jesus came to suffocate us in His all-consuming love...

It is in His breath-taking performance that we are given the oxygen needed to ignite this world with His crazy insane love. A love that gives us the power to step directly into the devastation by giving ourselves over to the truth of Christmas... I mean really giving ourselves over.

When we give into the Christmas truth we find the truth of Mas Christ is what suffocates my darkness with the light of His eternal flame. And in the burning truth of His eternal love we come to witness the glory of heaven as it erupted through the birth of a baby. A birth that fills our hearts and lungs with the air of truth behind (and within) Christmas.

Let us this day prayerfully embrace the Holy Spirit so that we might exhale the grime of life. Let us this day ask the Spirit to fill us with His strength so that we might inhale the unrelenting Christmas hope that erupts in the birth of divine love. Amen Jesus.

Eruption of Thanksgiving...

To give thanks insinuates something to be thankful for; it points to something beyond ourselves that has impacted our lives in such a way that our response is one of gratitude and praise.

Today many of us will find a multitude of “items” or “people” who fit this bill, and truth be told, many of us do have a plethora of things and/or people for which we are thankful.

But what if we stopped and took a moment... What if in the midst of all the food, football and fellowship we are missing the deeper, underlying foundation of thankfulness?

I wonder for those who bear the mark of Jesus - for those who call themselves followers of The Way, how many will illumine the cross on this day?

It is the cross where thanksgiving is found…it is where thanksgiving erupts.

As soon as we gaze upon the cross our hearts, our eyes are taken to the scene of the manager hidden away in the dusty, dirty, dark crevasse of a mountainside. Yes, thanksgiving is found from the cradle to the cross for it is here that we find the One who is the ultimate giving of thanks…Jesus Christ.

For God so loved the world that He gave… Our giving of thanks is the direct result of being given Love. That is, we must always remember that hanging on the cross is the One born in the manger—not just any baby, but the One who was with God, the One who is God, the One who is with us...The One who is Love...

Might some time today we give pause to the majesty of the cross? Might we stop to thank the One who gave of Himself so that we might receive the truth of ourselves? Might we take a moment and enter the drama of salvation so as to become the faithful performance of love?

Let your celebrations be magnificent this day! Stand, dance, shout for joy! And in your moments of bliss don't forget the One who is thankful for you! Amen Jesus!

So Loved...

How do we really know that God loves us?

Have you asked Him?

This weekend we witness how much love has been poured out on our behalf...

This weekend the tragedy of Friday, the silence of Saturday and the awakening of Sunday should erupt in joyful jubilation as we remember just how much we are loved. Oh yes, we are so loved...


So why not right now stop…take a knee and ask…Ask the Spirit to speak to your heart. Ask Him to destroy, remove, crush any obstacles that are hindering you from hearing the voice of the Crucified King as He hangs there on that rugged tree. Ask the Spirit to touch the eyes of your heart…

“Then He touched their eyes, saying, ‘According to your faith be it done to you.’ And their eyes were opened” (Matt 9.29-30).

We will only see when we are blinded by grace. When we turn to the cross so as to embrace the silence, the surrender, the solitude, the strength, the beauty of this weekend. 


In our embrace of His heart, that was drained for us on that cross, we lose the dead weight of selfishness so as to gain the greatness of Savior. And when we are engulfed in the greatness of Savior we realize the greatness of ourselves.

We realize that to be in His image is to be extraordinary, it is to be the deed and truth of love. For when we recognize the staggering reality of this weekend, we realize the truth of how much we are so loved...

So go ahead, ask Jesus how much He loves you. Ask the Spirit to open your heart so you might truly see. And when you open the eyes of your heart, you will find the divine hand of love stretched out so that it might embrace your heart and softly whisper, 

“My child for this I have waited, for this I came. To receive you into my arms, broken, lifeless, dead to self so that I might cover you in My love, fill you with the Holy Spirit and raise you up into our divine heart so that now you might finally realize you are so loved.”

Who am I

Today we are experiencing an identity crisis... On so many different levels... Yet the question that faces each of us might not be the most obvious one...

We want to believe the essential question of identity is the one asked by Mr. Vernon (Breakfast Club), when he required the fab 5 to write an essay addressing the question "Who am I?" And indeed, who we think we are is important, but not the most essential question...

Jesus, not Vernon, gives to us the essential question of identity when He asks, "Who do you say I am?"

And so how do you respond...

Truth is, who you say Jesus is answers who you think you are. For when you answer who Jesus is you answer the question of identity.

To say Jesus is insignificant or simply a nice guy or great teacher is to say that identity rests within the realm of the human. That is, that identity is based solely on what you do, and who you believe you are. It is an identity self-created, self-supported and independent of all outside forces; it is a worldly identity based on us and nothing supernatural. 

But to say Jesus is the Alpha and Omega, the Creator of all things, The Christ is to acknowledge that identity is realized only through the supernatural. That is, to fully recognize Jesus' divine reality is to fully recognize the fullness of our human reality. For when speaking of identity in Christ we are not speaking of a loss of identity; quite the opposite. Identity in Christ is the awakening of identity. To be identified in Christ ultimately means to be conformed to Him. Yes, identity in Christ is conformity to Christ. 

To be identified by Christ is to be conformed to His way, truth and life, in and through the Holy Spirit. To be identified with Christ is to be wedded to His mission. That is, “yes” to Christ is "yes" to being stretched to our breakthrough... A breaking through to His transformative movement. Saying YES to Jesus is saying yes to being immersed in the revelation of His radical love. A love that ignites the heart so as to saturate it in the mystery of our home-coming—the final return home, into the heart of the One who is love…

So question is, have you found your identity by answering the question of "Who do you say I am?"

Heaven's passion

No matter what may come your way, when we are in Christ through the Spirit, nothing in this world can separate us from His love. All we need is to find our place in prayer so as to realize our place in His heart.

God’s great desire for His people is that we feel secure in His love and in His power. Everything else in life may be unstable—our health, our family, our job, our education, our society, our world. At any given time and within any given moment you may feel as if you are out on a ledge forty stories up in an unpredictable wind. You feel yourself losing balance and falling, and every brick you grab pulls out of its mortar. When we walk according to "ourself" the ground beneath and the pillars all around us will only crumble.

Stability only comes from the One born in the stable.

Paradox of life is that being in Christ is the riskiest decision you can make…according to the world.

And yet saying "yes" to Jesus is the greatest decision you can take security in. Saying yes to Christ is saying yes to the crazy of life so as to find the stability of heaven's passion. As Paul writes, life in Christ is: tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword—we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered (Romans 8:35–36).

Paul knew the craziness of a life of a disciple but he knew that the love of Christ was even crazier in its power, presence and passion.

“In all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us…for nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (vs 37-39).

Paul’s life of faith was much like ours, one many questioned as to why do it? Why live such a life? Why give sacrificially when you are beaten, ostracized, criticized, while being opposed from every side?

But for Paul, as is for us today, the stability and power needed comes from the truth of being in Christ. For in Christ and through the Spirit we encounter the heart of God so as to find security in His love and strength in His power, even if everything else in the world is uncertain.

We have to be willing to fall to our knees and thank the One who became sin so as to seal us with His eternal love. Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection far surpass all understanding and knowledge and yet they are so simple that a child can understand that Jesus loves them. This is why Christ’s incarnational performance is to be the foundation of who we are if we are to be the foundation of love this world so desperately needs.

Jesus wants to be our security. Question is, “How will you respond to the life Jesus is calling you into? Resting in His security or trying to secure your own rest?”

Father Almighty, in Christ and through the Spirit, we are covered in Your eternal security and presence so that we might be the covering of Your love for all the world to experience. Amen Jesus!