God, at the core of his divine nature, is gracious. This means that God extends his favor to us as a gift, out of his delight in us. This grace is fully expressed in the coming of Jesus, and Christmas is a time to celebrate and receive the grace of God. 
In this sermon we explore the nature of God’s grace and how it defines the essence of God’s character. God shows us grace because this is God’s nature. To be gracious is to offer the gift of favor that is prompted by delight. God delights in us and this delight births favor. This word is used in the book of Esther when she comes before the king, hoping that he will delight in her in such a way that she experiences his grace.
In the New Testament we read in John 1:14 that Jesus was full of grace. And Paul wrote in Ephesians 2:4-5 that God extended his grace even when humans were living in rebellion. Grace is not something that is deserved or earned. It is a gift that is freely given. God’s delight in us is greater than our sin.
Jesus is the embodiment of God’s delightful favor. The coming of Jesus as a baby is the manifestation of what God thinks about us. He sees our delightfulness. And Jesus expresses this throughout his life. For instance, in Matthew 19:14, he demonstrates grace to the children, even though the adults were trying to guard them from Jesus. He says that God’s kingdom actually belongs to the children.
We are designed in such a way that we need to know that we are delighted in. We were created to live in grace and favor, because we were made for relationship with a graceful God. The divine attitude of delightful favor is stated with great clarity in Zephaniah 3:17. It reads:
The Lord, your God, is in your midst,
a warrior who gives victory;
he will rejoice over you with gladness;
he will renew you in his love;
he will exult over you with loud singing.
God enjoys us as he desires to relate to us and be with us. Many times, grace is juxtaposed to the greatness of our sin, as if it requires great grace to address the grandeur of our rebellion. But this way of thinking gives the expectation that God’s nature is not full of grace, and that God does not delight in us. The truth is that God’s stance toward us begins with grace, not with revulsion at what we have done.
The question that we face is whether we live in God’s delight of us. This requires us to receive his delight of us as individuals. Also, we have to learn how to enter into God’s delight in all people. In a world where we are trained to show suspicion and judge others, we are called to love, build up and encourage others. We need to develop the ability to see what is delightful in other people so that we can participate more fully in the way that God delights in us.
We can do this in three ways. First, we do this as we put on “toddler-vision.” This is the ability to see all people as unfinished children, including ourselves. In this way, we can allow people to have weaknesses and allow them the space to grow up on their own journey. Secondly, we must seek to understand other peoples’ back stories. This give us insight into why people act as they do because their painful experiences will shape how they act in frustrating ways. Third, we can participate in God’s delight as we more fully enter into our own story. This means that we allow all kinds of people to be in our lives, even those who might annoy us. They play parts in a larger story, and we need to zoom out to see the big picture instead of getting caught up on the moment.
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Dan, great sermon!
The question that we face is whether we live in God’s delight of us. This requires us to receive his delight in us as individuals. Also, we have to learn how to enter into God’s delight in all people. In a world where we are trained to show suspicion and judge others, we are called to love, build up, and encourage others.
Found this on YouTube:
The Scattered Mind Chapters 1-6 audio by Dr. Gabor Mate – Book had 2518 reviews Amazon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZDD0Vigck8&list=PLZUl351c7W3FtA4TeN0b2hsYfWu2_iZol
Also Three other Books of his:
When the Body Says No: Mind/Body Unity and the Stress-Disease Connection W/ Dr. Gabor Mate – 4172 reviews
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsBRrVqAAs8
I consider the pioneer of mind/ body medicine was Candace Pert, her book Molecules of Emotion, a neuroscientist and pharmacologist who discovered the opioid receptor, the cellular binding site for endorphins in the brain. Information (zero-point energy-matter), the lowest possible energy level or ground state in a quantized electromagnetic field) which interacts with the physical system of particles, which are represented by de Broglie waves with quantized energy levels via neuropeptides and receptors uses a coded language to communicate via a mind-body network that transcends space and time. Consciousness, with information, exists first, [a state of perfect resonance that contains all of the frequencies of all that is and ever was, which equates to, via microtubules quantum superposition., the simultaneous presence of multiple coexisting possibilities], as before the physical realm, which is secondary, merely an out-picturing of consciousness.
Consider the possibility that dark matter/energy is [96%] of the universe, as an expanding history of information possibilities/actualities, composed of primordial black holes and the remaining [4%] also black hole stardust, (the natural material realm), including our flesh also [96%] stardust as avatars [holographic references beams] that we, spiritual creatures, on one small rock use to navigate, the contrasting kingdoms of hell, self, and heaven in an ongoing making all things new journey.
As Greg says God knows the future as possibilities; adding his book “Seeing Is Believing: Experience Jesus through Imaginative Prayer”.
The Mind/Body connection as the main source of Disease – I was first introduced to this by the late Dr. Al Larson.
Sickness/Health factors
1. Exercise
2. Diet
3. Rest
4. Genetic predisposition
5. Environmental toxins
6. Emotional state From Al’s resources, eastern culture oriented, this was considered 85% of the problem.
I have a friend from high school who had a career as an ER surgeon at a Mayo Clinic subsidiary hospital. When I told him this 85% factor he corrected me stating in his experience it’s only 50%. Though less than 50% is still half and this comes from the opinion of a Western-educated healthcare professional.
The Hungry Ghost: A Biopsychosocial Perspective on Addiction/Dr. Gabor Mate – 5236 reviews
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMstO3U4sVw
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Myth of Normal & The Power of Connection | Wholehearted – 4119 reviews
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0cODqqYyi8
Gabor sees this ongoing incoherent emotional state as not just a personnel problem but more so culture-oriented. Connects well with the idea Jesus came to fix more than just our personal sin.
There is a Christian group The Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) focused on bringing together a range of thought leaders and practitioners from across the political, business, and cultural spectrum to debate challenges facing Western civilization and discuss practical solutions. Rather than looking to big government and top-down solutions to find the answers to society’s biggest problems, ARC is an international community that is building a vision for a better world where every citizen can prosper, contribute, and flourish.
ARC’s thinking is Faith is the kind of courage that causes us to welcome God’s range of possibilities for the future into actualities tilting the World towards Heaven and away from Hell. Today is the end of the world as we know it. A Consumer-based economy needs to be replaced by a Genesis 1:28 resource-managed economy.
From the ARC conference WATCH: An Honest & Sensible Conversation about Global Energy | Scott Tinker
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTfwqvNuk44&t=293s
Before solid-state computers machines used tubes and the processing of data was sequential via tape drives.
From Chao’s theory, 1960 Edward Lorenz, we got to fractals and Ulam’s Rose or Prime Number Spiral, 1963,
[watch https://www.abarim-publications.com/artctulam.html%5D
then, in 1971, to indexing [random access]. This was a joint effort between Honeywell and IBM to create the first worldwide reservation system for National Car.
I was on that team. The machine we used was a 360 model 40, 100 times faster than the tube models at 1 third the size, but cost 2 million, weighed 5100 lbs., sat on a raised floor for cooling, a million a year expense, and IBM SE’s would still come in and replace the overheated core. It ran in 60k partitions. A floppy disk is 1,250k that’s 31.25 times larger than that partition.
The iPhone 7 Plus, 2021, 6.63 ounces came with 3 GB and cost $769: that’s 75,000 times more power than the IBM 360 40 and it never overheats.
In 1971 you could now call a reservation clerk anywhere in the world and they could bring up your reservation in a second. Before that, this was a manual file cabinet process that required file duplication from receiving to the actual pickup location.
Today the possibilities are endless. You can Google your iPhone for a complex question and get a list of answers in seconds from a network of databases all around the world.
This all took 63 years. What might we discover in the future?
The notion of zero-point energy is also important for cosmology, and physics currently lacks a full theoretical model for understanding zero-point energy in this context; in particular, the discrepancy between theorized and observed vacuum energy in the universe is a source of major contention. Physicists Richard Feynman and John Wheeler calculated the zero-point radiation of the vacuum to be an order of magnitude greater than nuclear energy, with a single light bulb containing enough energy to boil all the world’s oceans.
NASA/JSC Eagleworks is implementing an advanced propulsion physics laboratory to pursue propulsion technologies, to enable Space Mining, not requiring fuel but quantum vacuum fluctuations. Complex and highly specialized conducting cavities, generate a thrust that “pushes” against the vacuum of space by directing the flow of virtual electrons & positrons generated from standing radio-frequency waves inside closed cavities. Resulting in discovering variations of zero-point energy to lock a laser beam on mineral-rich asteroids, out in space, and then use a spacecraft to pull it back to a location close to Earth.
If we continue to be a consumer-based economy from an environmental standpoint it will soon be game over however the good news is the Christmas story is Jesus coming as the only solution to a threefold problem. However, that will only happen as we follow Jesus welcoming God’s range of possibilities.