Keeping Christmas

5 thoughts on “Keeping Christmas”

1. Hennie Gray says:

   Thursday January 1, 2015 at 4:44 pm

   A delightful and inspiring message for me to learn from as a local preacher. Thank you!

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2. kevin says:

   Sunday January 4, 2015 at 2:41 pm

   ‘confess what is already true about me in Christ’…i still don’t get it. that seems so ambiguous and impossible. Doing the do’s and not doing the don’t’s seems much easier to grasp. i can do that and still give God all the glory, yeah?

   i must change in two glaring areas; if i understand this thing, then ‘Christ in me’ already has the victory over these two areas and i……come into agreement with that? When i go about not doing the don’t’s, i can see the behavior change immediately; just confessing that i’m holy….i do not see change; how long does this confessing go on before i notice the difference?

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3. Ryan says:

   Sunday January 4, 2015 at 11:24 pm

   Kevin,
   I totally get where you’re at with this message- I struggled to understand where the rubber meets the road with this philosophy, how we could ‘see’ results. What I eventually realized is that that’s not the point of this sermon- through the love of Christ the burden is no longer on us to prove the results, or show what differences have made in our life. Every moment in which we accept Jesus as our champion and as our identity as Greg talks about, is a moment in which we accept our forgiveness and purity. I would contend that from my own experience, this attitude leads to losing whatever bad habits one is struggling with- however, I would say that these need to be known as the ‘side effects’ if that makes sense. Looking for a timeframe of results, as I always used to, puts the focus in the wrong place- or at least as I understand it. The focus needs to always be on the forgiving, loving, caring, grace, of Jesus, our Savior and identity. I rallied pretty hard against that for a long time, because I thought it sounded like crazy talk, but for me I’ve learned it to be true.
   Hope that might help at all.

   Ryan

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4. M85 says:

   Monday January 5, 2015 at 10:20 am

   Thanks for this. Just what I needed.

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5. Dave Pritchard says:

   Wednesday January 7, 2015 at 3:00 am

   Kev,

   When thinking about this latest message and the insightful issues you’ve raised in your comment, I immediately started clicking back to Paul’s use of the Soma, Sarx and Pneuma and how those terms/concepts are all dynamically intertwined into our overall being.

   Ryan is so right when he says that our focus should not be so much on the progress that we’re making, but rather on the Progress Giver. It’s hard though, like most I’m always watching the thermometer, speedometer, odometer, and any other meter that measures progress. Like a man stuck in an elevator, we pensively watch the floors go by thinking – “Am I there yet, am I there yet?” – Ha! In fact, God has often dropped me off deliberately on those lower levels in order for me to learn, absorb and experience something before I get back in and head upwards – as if I even controlled the elevator – Ha!

   Over at The Meeting House site this week, Neurologist Dr. Blake Martin gives an awesome and discerning message on how our minds and bodies often corroborate to shape our emotional state. In Romans 7:14 -25 Paul really teases this out something fierce and shows how difficult it actually is to get a grip on the “do’s and don’ts” and our internal/external existence. When there seems to be no end to the battle between our “Pneuma” and “Sarx”, I’ve found it’s best to just cling tenaciously onto verse 24 & the first part of 25 –

   “Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? -Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

   Cheers!

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