Two Christmas "Compilations" . . .

I have taken the liberty to “translate” a couple of Bible verses (no I am not a Greek scholar, and I don’t claim that these are “accurate” in that sense). I hope that they bless you as they have me as I have reflected on Christmas this season. Please don’t get offended that I have taken this liberty—nothing blasphemous is meant by it, and I am not trying to say it is a true “translation” or to add to or take away from His Word which is perfect and true. These are more accurately compilations of multiple verses put together into a way that helps me, by putting different thoughts in one place, grasp just what it is I believe.

May this Christmas be filled with joy, awe, and worship for all of you as you reflect on the wonder and the awe of God loving us as much as He does, and being so near to us. Thanks for reading my blog, sharing your thoughts, and being a part of my life. I value you. To paraphrase Paul Ellis in his “Escape to Reality” blog, through God’s eyes Jesus came to earth because God loves us, so through God’s eyes, “You are the reason for the season.”

God bless you all, and Merry Christmas!  —Erick

"Translation" of Luke 2, verse 5: “to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child” becomes:

to be registered with Mary, [a young, poor virgin from a no account city], his betrothed [(because he was told in a dream that her story that an angel had come to her and that it was God who had put the child in her was true)], who [had inside her frail and very human womb the One who breathes out stars, the Creator of all the universe, the One who all things find in Him their beginning and their end, the One in whom all things are held together and around Whose throne the multitude of angels and hosts of heaven hover and bow and cry “holy, holy, holy]”.

"Translation" of John 1:14a, drawing heavily on Revelation 19:11–16: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us . . .” becomes:

And the [One called “The Word of God” and “King of Kings and Lord of Lords” who will return on a white horse with eyes like a flame of fire and wearing a robe dipped in blood with all the armies of Heaven behind Him also arrayed on white horses when He returns to strike down the nations and rule them with a rod of iron as He treads out the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty] became [a baby, laid in an animal feed trough, surrounded by coarse straw and wrapped in rough cloths, totally helpless and dependent on a poor couple, hounded and chased from His own country] and [lived among us, getting tired, hungry, weeping, being single and homeless, rejected, spit on, mocked, beaten, and ultimately killed] . . .

Studying and Honoring the Word

I received and email today from Derek Prince Ministries in which the president of its USA division, Dick Leggatt, talked of the foundational importance of God's Word to us and said of Derek, "One of my fondest recollections of my early contact with Derek Prince had to do with his love for the Word of God, and his priority of studying and honoring it."

He then went on to tell of a time in 1972 when he visited Derek's home and, while Derek was out of the room, sneaked a peak at Derek's open Bible to find out what he was studying and found he couldn't read it because it was all in Greek. He says, "Derek was studying his New Testament in the original Greek. My very next thought was, 'What kind of a man is this?' " Dick then wrote, "I'll tell you the answer to that question. Derek was a man who knew and loved the Word of God. It was the foundation of his life. It was his rock."

As I read the email I was struck with a distinction Dick made early in it when he talked of Derek's priority of studying and honoring the Word. I thought, that is a very wise distinction. We are told to study God's Word, to meditate on it, to immerse our self in it, to rightly divide it. But that alone won't be a foundation for us. I knew a man who could quote the Bible inside and out—far better than I ever will. He had even, if my memory serves me correctly, chosen his college because it was the only one at the time offering a New Testament study course. The man was brilliant—with a memory seemingly without holes and with an IQ that led him to shatter test records. He also thought the Bible yielded some good history but was basically a good story book. In fact, his lifestyle was in open rejection of what God says is pleasing to Him, and he held no belief in God, especially as a personal Lord and Savior. The last time I met him, years later, that hadn't changed.

You see, it is not enough to simply study the Word of God. We are almost, in seems in so many cases in America, taught way past our point of obedience. We know far more than we are ever obeying. We must not only study the Word of God, but we must honor it. When we honor someone we put them up higher, we call them to the front, we give them a place of esteem and recognition. We must honor the Word of God. It must be something we esteem, we put to the front of our life, we anchor our hopes and expectations and choices in, we live worthy of. Our lives must bear out our esteem for the Word by honoring it with our choices to live by it—not just saying it is important to us, but our lives being a testimony by which someone could tell the Word is important to us even if we never said it.

I like that distinction—studying and honoring. Those two, together, make for a powerful foundation for a Christian's life! When we know God's Word, and then we make a decision to esteem it and hold it high in our life, we will find ourselves living a life of holiness, and also a life of faith. Holiness because God's Word calls us to it and we honor that. Faith because we make His Word important enough to us that we believe it even when what we see around us contradicts it.

Holiness and Faith. Wow! When those mark our life there is no telling how He might "turn the world upside down" (Acts 17:6) through us. Couple that with a decision to sacrificially love God and others above all else and I can't imagine what a life might look like . . . but I am hopefully moving toward finding out because I want those to be the marks of my life, and the witness and strength and inheritance I give/show to Mary Ann and Bethany and Abigail and others.

Note: Please prayerfully consider commenting on my "I Gots to Know!" post (1/12/2010) on what it means to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. I really believe both you, and we the audience, will be blessed by your prayerful searching out that subject and then sharing what you find.

Fear Knocks and Faith Answers . . .

My great grandfather on my dad's mom's side, Harvey Randall, was a Methodist minister. (I have posted a picture of him and my great grandmother, Lauretta Randall, on their Golden Wedding anniversary in 1942.)

Stuck inside my great grandfather's Bible, in the Hebrews 11 faith section, was a printed flyer (or sheet) by Ralph Beebe. At the top of the sheet it says:

FEAR KNOCKED AT THE DOOR. FAITH ANSWERED. NO ONE WAS THERE.

Mr. Beebe then wrote, "I read these words over the fireplace of the Hind's Head Hotel in Bray-on-Thames, not far from London, a year ago. They were ascribed to no author, and I had never met them before, but they have been with me since."

These words really spoke to me. If you have followed this blog any length of time you know that faith is a strong theme of it. The Bible says that we walk by faith and not by sight, that without faith it is impossible to please God, and that faith released many people's desperately needed miracles and unbelief quenched the work of God as well. I believe faith is, ultimately, at its core, the commitment we make in to the conviction we have of God's goodness, love, trustworthiness, power, and Word, and I believe that there is tremendous power in faith—it is like the water that brings out the life in the seed of God's Word and promises.

When fear knocks, we answer with faith. We bring God's Word and promises and character to bear on the situation, and rest our emotions and thoughts and expectations and hopes on what He says and brings, and not on what we see before us. We dare to believe and rest our trust in the One who calls things that are not as if they were, and who, with a word, speaks in to existence that which was not. He's the One who will never leave me. He's the One who died that I might have an intimate relationship with me. He's the One in me who is greater than the one pacing the world. He's the One who is faithful to complete the good work He has begun in me.

To borrow the cry of the Zimbabwe believers, "That's my God!" (see the November 19, 2009 post That's My God!).

It’s Not a Bathtub With Cute Giraffes Popping Out!

I love being surrounded by things that remind us of God. Bethany and Abigail play with a cute Noah’s Ark toy that I had as a kid, we hang Christmas ornaments with Bible pictures, we send and receive cards with pictures of Bible things on them, and we decorated our girl’s crib area with cute little Noah’s Arks that are delightful to a baby with their elephants and giraffes sticking their HUGE heads out of the TINY ark. These are delightful and wonderful and I’d probably decorate our nursery again with them, so don’t take what I am about to say as being a “kill joy” or “conspiracy theorist.”

These things are, I believe, fun and a great way to introduce our children to the testimony of the Lord’s work through history, but they may, unbeknownst to us, aid in undermining our faith in the account when we get a little older if we aren’t careful and diligent to replace those cute images with real facts about things like the ark.

What I mean by that is this—the ark would have had to have thousands and thousands of animals in it to do what God said it did, and if we try and fit the Biblical account of Noah in to an image of the ark that goes back to our childhood nursery or toy, we will, by necessity, find doubt about the account (hence God’s Word) creeping in. There is simply no way the account of Noah’s Ark could be true if it is anything like the way we usually see it pictured and, if that is our picture of it, we will begin to doubt or try and water down this account of God’s judgment and the faith that preserved a righteous people through it. I don’t care where doubt in God’s Word creeps in—it will always, from there, try and slink and slither its way toward the core of God’s Word, the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ.

So, yesterday for the history time of homeschool, we took my 50' tape measure and started in our yard and took it nine times down our driveway and across our road in to our neighbors field to make the Bible’s recorded 450' length of the ark come to life for us. I can tell you, if you have never done that, that was one big ship! Wow—it truly was an awesome, mighty vessel worthy to sustain the violent upheaval of the earth and heaven’s waters! Looking at its size you can see how Noah was a giant of faith to persevere in building it!

So, if you ever want to be blown away, and to have your faith restored, come on over. You can now stand outside our kitchen window and look up at the nail in our wall marking Goliath’s height (9' 6" in our case, though some say he was 10' 6"). Or, you can look at the nail in our wall at 15' off the ground marking the diameter the sun would be if the earth were the size of a golf ball. Or, you can now stand in our driveway and stare all the way down it and across to our neighbor’s field at the circuit breaker standing there 450' feet away, and be awed by the ark and the man of faith who believed in God’s Word enough to build it. No wonder God sought to preserve faith like that!

(Note: You can see a picture of our girls under the Goliath and sun nails in our wall in my Oct. 6th post, “Fallen Giants and Big Stars — Good Reminders . . .”)

Thanks, and a Reminder, and a Comment on a Comment

Thanks, all of you, for your checking out my blog and for your comments and encouragements. I am really excited about this.

I wanted to remind any of you who decided to sign up by email to receive this blog that after you put in your email and submit it you will get a confirmation email sent to the address you used with a link that you must click on to activate it. This is to protect you from having someone else sign you up. I think the email sign up is a great thing if you want to be a regular part of the blog because you don't have to keep checking back to see if I have added anything to it (you do need to keep checking back to see/read comments).

I also wanted to comment on a comment made by AMY on my posting, "God Rocked My World This Morning..." (you can read it by clicking on the comment link below that post). I think her reminder is a very valid and powerful one. Too often, I think, we emphasize faith in God to perform His Word simply in the context of His good and encouraging promises to us---and that is good and essential and Biblical and honoring to God. But, we must have equal faith in God to perform the parts of His Word that aren't so fun to hear about. Those parts, like justice for those who don't receive the work of Jesus on the cross, should bring in to our lives a deep urgency as we realize that God WILL perform His Covenant Word, and many, many don't trust Him.

Another thought, along these lines: When we stand on God's Word and promises to/for us we must make sure we have seen the context of that Word and the precepts (or conditions) He attaches to that Word. Single line verses make great bumper stickers and refrigerator magnets, but often they have conditions and context above and below them that are a part of the promise. If we stand on those single verses, apart from the rest, and they don't come through, then it is our fault for not understanding the full offer and condition God has made, not His fault for not performing His Word.