Merry Christmas
Tuesday, January 5, 2010 at 10:17PM 
This past month I have heard two sermons that have shaped my Advent experience. (Advent is the four week period leading up to Christmas. The Latin translation for "Advent" is "the coming". This is the time of the year when believers in Christ anticipate and remember the coming, the birth of our Lord Jesus). These two messages have blended together causing me to pray about God's Economy and everyone involved with the ministry.
The first meaningful sermon that I heard came through Pastor Pat Goodman. Pat had the distinction of launching my home church into the Advent Season. The message was jam packed with teachings, and my primary take away from the message has been several questions that Pat posed to the church body.
Pat described the journey of a very pregnant Mary and her husband, Joseph, on their way to Bethlehem. The couple traveled some eighty-five miles to get to Bethlehem and when they arrived they found, "no room in the inn." Ultimately, a spot was found in an annexed room where Mary could labor and deliver her unborn child, the Lord Jesus. Pat pondered these types of questions: This Advent, do you and I have room for the Lord Jesus? Has God been pushed to the fringes of our lives? Love came down. Do you have room for Jesus in your heart?
I heard the second provocative sermon just a few days ago when a good girlfriend gave me a CD that was recorded in early autumn at a local church. The pastor that Sunday was Pastor Mike Donohue. Mike preached two successive Sundays on the topic of "evangelization". His first Sunday message unpacked one of Jesus' core components: compassion.
Mike shared with his listeners that Jesus was full of compassion as he saw the human condition and entered into the life experience. Over and over in Scripture, one reads that Jesus "saw and had compassion." The two actions are hand and glove. One must first see in order to then respond from deep within her heart. More importantly, Mike suggested that each of us must stop and ask ourselves: What is it like to be the other person, to live his life, to have his trials, tribulations, joys, sorrows, et cetera.
Do we ever stop to consider what life looks like from someone else's point of view?
Do we see and have compassion?
The ministry that each of us has through God's Economy addresses these key questions. By taking our focus off our own personal gratification and sharing our resources with those who have less in life, we are offering Jesus a room in the inn. Come Prince of Peace and reside with us. Change our hearts from the inside out. With Jesus in residence a new set of lenses is placed over our eyes. All of a sudden we see issues like clean drinking water, or bed nets, or feeding orphans, or HIV as we have never seen them before. Instead of these being issues and concerns for "them", "for those people", the Lord has given us His eyes to see so that now these are problems and concerns for us! Jesus saw and had compassion. By serving, sharing, praying, and equipping the friends in Malawi, we are dispensing compassion that will change lives and restore hope to the hopeless. As we give away our resources we become the recipients of the same. We are blessed to be a blessing. You and I have seen and continue to see and are compelled to give away the abundant blessings that are ours in Christ Jesus.
This is the good news of the gospel. Emmanuel, God with us, in us, through us and going beyond us to teach us how to care.
Reader Comments (1)
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