advent – Cultivating Faithfulness

Isaiah, I believe your report

torah-reading

Isaiah, I Believe Your Report

by Sheila Dougal

O God of Isaiah!

I believe your report!

You cut me from the Rock.

You planted in me the Word.

You made me your child because you became the Servant.

My transgressions pierced You.

My sins crushed You.

One of your smallest stones yet you laid me.

One of your least fruitful trees yet you planted me.

One minuscule cell of your body yet you formed me.

One of your most-lost sheep yet you sought me.

One of your shameful women yet you call me daughter.

One of your children far off yet you adopted me.

One of your sick from head to toe yet you healed me.

One of your proud and obstinate yet you humbled me.

One of your sold in chains of lust yet you redeemed me.

One of your blind yet you opened my eyes.

One of your deaf yet your voice you made me hear.

One of your dead yet you made me alive.

Your pierced feet are beautiful!

Your scarred hands bear my name!

See and be satisfied!

Your child believes!

Good news! Scandalous, glorious news!

No one has ever published so good a report!

4 Ways to Unwrap the Gift of Waiting on God

There’s a lot of waiting on God in the Bible. Joseph’s waits in prison, wrongly accused. Israel waits in captivity, suffering for her idolatry. Roman occupied Jerusalem waits for the Messiah after centuries of hearing nothing from God. And we wait for Christ’s return while we sow the seed of his gospel sojourning here. Waiting on God is an act promised to receive blessing according to the scriptures (Isaiah 30:15). And it’s the meditative focus of Advent. During the Christmas season we have opportunity to think about what or who exactly we’re waiting for. In the midst of parties, shopping lists, cookie exchanges, decorations and concerts, it is easy to miss the gift of waiting on God. Sometimes it takes hard circumstances for us to wake from our busy stupor and embrace the sober gift of longing for our coming King. It took a hard situation for me to exchange the stress of the season for savoring the sweetness of waiting on Jesus. If you find yourself in a painful, confusing, not-at-all-jolly season while the world around you rings bells and sings carols, I invite you to come aside with your Bible, a pen and paper and start unwrapping the gift of waiting on Jesus this Advent.

Waiting When Life Doesn’t Get Better

My youngest son was born two days after Christmas 13 years ago. That year, while I was burdened with his growing body inside mine, I was also heavy laden with a load of fear, sadness and shock. My husband was seeking a divorce and I was about to give birth to our second son. Along with the heavy anxieties of those cares came a stronger arm of grace to bear me up. In those days I began to learn what it means to wait on God in faith amidst my fearful circumstances. In the year my son was born, I started to learn that hoping in God and having faith in him meant waiting with expectation for Jesus, not waiting for everything in my life to get better.

That year, I began journaling in a discounted spiral-bound notebook I found at a local grocery store. With a poinsettia and the word “Faith” on the front, that journal became the place where I started a practice that has continued until now. Every year around Christmastime (sometimes the first week of the new year) I spend some time prayerfully reading God’s word with a specific look for how the Spirit would direct me in the coming year as well as reflecting on the last year’s entry and reality.

As I look back over the years, each year, I see how God is faithfully doing what he promised. He is using all things together for my good, to conform me to the image of his Son. Although I’ve seen God’s answer to my slow-to-believe prayers, my circumstances haven’t changed much. Thankfully, my husband and I are still married. But the marriage hasn’t been without its very difficult times. It’s not like I can say I have hope because God turned life in to a fairytale story of happily ever after. Not at all. I’m still praying for salvation to come to my household, and save every member. I’m still praying for God to rid me of being a coward and a man-pleaser and make me a woman of God who laughs at the days to come and fears God not man. I’m still a tired mom, who deals with depression and fears. But I do all that with a periodic lifting of my head to remember that I’m waiting on God. Advent is a good time to lift our heads and call to mind our hope.

Capture a Remembrance of Your Hope

Even if writing or journaling isn’t your thing, making a yearly tradition of using a small journal entry as a way of focusing your attention on Christ and his coming may help you look up and focus on the gift of Jesus. Here are four suggestions for how you might capture a yearly remembrance of your hope in the One who came to save his people from their sins, and is coming again to consummate our joy in him.

1) Cast your circumstances on him. Put in the journal the circumstances that are causing you to long for him. Is your marriage a wreck? Is your child dying? Have you lost a loved one? Are you lonely? Depressed? Anxious? Afraid? Tell him! Write it down. The Bible calls us to cast our cares upon the Lord because he cares for us (1 Peter 5:7). In Isaiah, Hezekiah took the threats of his enemies and laid them out before God and called on God to intervene. In the gospels, people brought their sick selves and loved ones to Jesus. When you bring your troubles to God in writing, you start to realize how much you long for him to do what he promises to do one day: Make all things new (Revelation 21:5).

2) Call to mind his promises. Look up scriptures with words like “hope” and “wait” and “trust” and “faith”. You’ll find some promises and prayers that will help you worship while you wait this Advent. Like this one, “From of old no one has heard or perceived by the ear, no eye has seen a God besides you, who acts for those who wait for him.” (Isaiah 64:4) Write it down. And turn those specific scriptures that grab you into prayers for yourself and others. Pray that God will help you hope in him.

3) Cry for your kids, or someone else’s. A yearly advent journal is a good place to put prayers for your kids or for kids in your life, maybe cousins, nieces, nephews, grandkids, kids in the neighborhood, kids at school, kids at church, etc. God doesn’t want us to hope in our kids. But he does want us to hope in him for our kids and to give our kids Him as their hope. “…that the next generation might know them, the children yet unborn, and arise and tell them to their children, so that they should set their hope in God and not forget the works of God…” (Psalm 78:5-7). Writing down your prayers for the next generation is a wonderful way to build your anticipation for Jesus.

4) Cry for new desires. It’s easy during the holidays to get distracted by things we want. Whether it be material things like a new phone, or clothes. Or relational desires like a new friend, or a happier marriage. Though there’s nothing wrong with those desires, if they consume us, we’ve missed out on real joy. In the midst of God’s chastisement Isaiah prays that God would be gracious to his people, because though they may be sick from head to toe with sin, his people really were longing for him. In their distress they waited for God their Savior. It says, “Your name and remembrance are the desire of our soul.” (Isaiah 26:8). Over the years I look back and realize that often the name of Christ and his remembrance wasn’t the desire of my soul, but as I have cast my cares and called his promises to mind and cried for my kids, he’s developed in me a longing for new desires. He has created in me a desire for his name and remembrance. He has caused me to embrace waiting on him.

Life’s circumstances can be horrific, mundane, depressing, chaotic or just distracting. But when we lift our eyes off the circumstances, tell God about them, cry for his help, seek his grace and wait on him we experience the gift of anticipating our coming King.

The difference between submitting to authority and leaning on authority

(photo credit)

“In that day the remnant of Israel and the survivors of the house of Jacob will no more lean on him who struck them, but will lean on the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, in truth. -Isaiah 10:20.”

I’ve been reading through Isaiah with the #IsaiahChristmas community the past few days. One thing is really sticking with me: there’s a big difference between submitting to authority and leaning on authority.

In Isaiah 10 God through Isaiah announces his judgements on Assyria, a government and people he used to purify his people. But now he’s telling his people not to be afraid of them because he’s going to come down on the Assyrians for being so arrogant. They may have been the tool God used to chastise them, but they weren’t God. They were a tool in God’s hand. That is all. The tool wasn’t going to get away with boasting over the One who designed it.

“Shall the axe boast over him who hews with it,

or the saw magnify itself against him who wields it?

As if a rod should wield him who lifts it,

or as if a staff should lift him who is not wood!” -Isaiah 10:15

The Assyrians were used by God to deal with his people and their idolatrous ways. He let his people have who they were leaning on: the Assyrians. They apparently wanted to be like them. They feared these guys Rezin and Remaliah, because they were powerful. They seemed to have desired to be like these guys who would put hooks in their captives noses. They saw all that oppressive power, feared it, and wanted to be like it. Israel wasn’t satisfied with God’s good, gentle authoritative rule over them. They wanted the imposing power of the nations they feared.

“Because this people has refused the waters of Shiloah that flow gently, and rejoice over Rezin and the son of Remaliah, therefore, behold, the Lord is bringing up against them the waters of the River, mighty and many, the king of Assyria and all his glory. And it will rise over all its channels and go over all its banks…” – Isaiah 8:6-7

God had gentle, good waters for them, but they wanted the powerful, influential rivers of Assyria. So he let them have it. He let them have what they were leaning on, what they feared, what they trusted to hold them up. There, propped up under the abusive hand of Assyria they felt the distinct difference between the gentle ways of God with his people and the abusive was of world rulers. There, God tore down what Israel was leaning on.

And there, weak and few, Israel again began to lean on their good God and no longer on their lust for influence of power.

“In that day the remnant of Israel and the survivors of the house of Jacob will no more lean on him who struck them, but will lean on the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, in truth.” Isaiah 10:20

I so identify with this whole story. Isaiah testifies to me of my love of men’s praise and desire to be influential with influential people. I lean on men. This is me naturally. Sinfully. But Jesus is in me. In Isaiah I see how he has dealt with me these 24 years, letting the man I leaned on fall time and time again, so that I would see where my trust was lying and how unreliable man is.

In my case, it’s my marriage. But it could be the government. Or a boss. Or a teacher. Or anyone or thing that I trust, lean on, to support me and fulfill me. In every case, God will not let his people continue with such a false hope and betraying trust. He will use the very thing we trust against us to cause us to see how much we’re trusting in it. And then, if that person, or government of situation abuses it’s position as a tool in God’s hand, God will deal with them. He is not letting our “functional saviors” fail for our failure. He’s letting them fail for our good.

In any case, whether it be a marriage, or a political party or government or employer… God has instructed us to submit to people in positions of leadership- husbands, police officers, governors, presidents, teachers, etc. But submitting to those people or institutions is not the same as leaning on them. In fact, submitting to them means they’re leaning on us. And if we’re leaning on Christ as being God’s own children, then we can endure whatever comes our way through their opposition or difficult personalities or injustices. We can endure, even resist while we serve and do good, leaning on our good God who will deal with the people in authority.

The coming hope of Israel in Isaiah is our hope also. Christ is our hope. And his yoke is light. We can come under it and suffer and come out risen and perfected and made new. We can rest in God’s good ways. But if we rest on those in authority, we will be stricken by their failure to be what only God can be.

Just keep reading

1896PaulGauguinTeTamariNoAtuaNativity

(Image credit: Paul Gauguin, Te Tamari No Atua (Nativity),1896)

*Before I begin, you should really go to that image credit link and read about this painting of the Nativity.*

I’m not a Bible scholar. I really enjoy reading and studying the Bible, but I don’t have any formal education in the Bible. I have had some really good pastors and Bible teachers teach me how to read the Bible for myself and without fail that still small voice of God speaks to me through the words on paper and pixel.

I don’t think I’ve ever read through Isaiah. Today I read Isaiah 7-9. Honestly, I had to read it several times and listen to it read to me on my YouVersion app on my phone. I get stuck on spots like:

In the days of Ahaz the son of Jotham, son of Uzziah, king of Judah, Rezin the king of Syria and Pekah the son of Remaliah the king of Israel came up to Jerusalem to wage war against it… – Isaiah 7:1

Who’s Ahaz? Who’s Jotham? Who’s Uzziah and Rezin and Pekah and Remaliah? I want to go investigate (and I probably should) but I can’t let these foreign names stop me from reading. I need to just keep reading. And reading. And reading. And listening. And then when something sticks out to me, dwell on it. So that’s what I did today. Although I would like to know about Ahaz and all those people with strange names in the first sentence to help me get my brain around what was going on when Isaiah wrote this, I don’t need to know them to hear what God would say to me about himself and his ways in these chapters.

In a little gathering of believers who called themselves Pathway Bible Church I had a pastor who did such a great job of teaching me to stop devotionalizing every scripture to see what I could squeeze out of it for myself, but rather to ask what the passage was teaching me about God and the people in the passage and about his ways in the world. I’m so thankful for that. And him.

Seeing God, especially Christ in the scriptures has much greater impact on my life than trying to see myself in the Bible. The Bible is not about me. It’s about Jesus. Isaiah is not about me. It’s about Jesus. Israel is not about America or me, but about God’s people everywhere. And how God relates to his people, everywhere, is shown in how he relates to Israel. Now I know there are theological trains of thought about Israel and God and times and such, but what I mean here is, Israel is at least in part a picture of God’s people universal.

In Isaiah, Israel was being told of “God with us” (Immanuel) coming to be the ruler they desperately needed. The Creator of the Universe says to his sin-laden, man-fearing people, “Stop fearing rulers. Fear me. I will come. And you will stumble and break on my humility. The rule of power is on my shoulders.”

When I read today’s section for the #IsaiahChristmas reading in chapters 7-9, I was struck by a couple things about God and his people both then and now:

God’s people need to be told not to fear. The phrase, “Do not fear,” appears fifty-one times in my ESV Bible. God tells his people not to fear because they do. We’re afraid. And we’re afraid of things that seem reasonable. This guy Ahaz was afraid of the, “fierce anger of Rezin and Syria and the son of Remaliah.” But despite these guys’ power and anger, God calls his people to trust him. He tells us his perspective on the fierce anger of those we fear: their just irritating smoke. And He declares our problem:

If you will not be firm in faith, you will not be firm at all. -Isaiah 7:9b

God’s ways are not our ways. His sign to Israel that he will deal with oppression: a son born to a virgin who’s name will be Immanuel- God with us. God won’t simply deal with angry rulers who threaten his people. He deals with the fear of man that oppresses his people. Instead of fearing God, they fear people. And so do we. God won’t come to be with us the way we want, making us oppressors of the people we fear. He comes to be a sanctuary for those who trust in him and a stumbling stone to those who don’t. He breaks apart the chains of the fear of man by his humble coming as a child. A child who bears the government on his shoulders. He will make things right. But he won’t sanctify the oppressive fear of man that keeps his people trapped in sinful cycles of loving men’s praise rather than God’s. He comes not to give us what we want, but to give us a new want, new eyes. He comes to us in our darkness, shining brilliantly so we can see our real state where our real hope lies.

And it won’t be Israel’s zeal to pull herself together again to begin another cycle of obedience, idolatry, suffering, crying out, rescue, repeat that will accomplish this freedom and seeing.

The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this. -Isaiah 9:7

Waiting on God

I’ve decided to join the online #IsaiahChristmas community on Twitter, headed up by Tony Reinke, in an Advent reading through the book of Isaiah this year. Today: Chapter 1 and 2.

Maybe it’s the 24 years of praying. Maybe it’s the reading of God’s righteous expose of his peoples crooked condition. Maybe it’s the constant announcement of corruption and evil among leaders and Christians who make excuses for them. Maybe it’s the Case For Christ movie I just watched with my boys. Maybe it’s spending the day with my grandmother who’s cancer is spreading through her brain. Maybe its the walk down the isle at Walmart for milk past piles and piles of things- sweaters with little Santas and elves on them, gingerbread houses, discounted T.V.’s in even bigger sizes than last year, and every kind of candy bar turned cereal you can imagine. Whatever it is, I feel a particularly weighty sense of longing for Jesus to show up. Not like in my living room right now, but in my marriage, in my family, in my race of faith. I’m longing. Waiting. Hoping. Praying for God to visit us. For his will to be done on earth, even on 183rd avenue in Surprise, Arizona, as it is in heaven.

We’re sick from head to toe, inside and out. We can’t escape our wickedness. We are terrible judges. And even worse saviors. We love fickle-man’s praise. We’re blind to our rottenness. God doesn’t want our prescribed penance or hip, western churchianity. Our songs mean nothing when our hearts love bribes and gifts from people. Our prayers come against His rejecting hand when act like we’re all cleaned up when really the blood of our children are on our hands, the price paid for our gain of more things from Walmart. And in this damnable state Isaiah announces our hope:

“Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord

though your sins are like scarlet,

they shall be as white as snow;

though they are red like crimson,

they shall become like wool.” Isaiah 1:18

Only God can do that.

Advent day 1: Believing God’s Promises

It’s almost midnight.

Everyone’s asleep.

The tree is up. The front porch has lights. And 3 out of 4 Advent candles are on the table.

Advent has meant more and more to me over the years. It really is a gift from God that I treasure.

It started when Ryland was born. 10 years ago (almost 11). Having a Christmas baby during a very stressful and sad time in my life was like a behind the scenes peak for me at the wonder of the Incarnation of Christ. God used it like that anyway. He really gave me eyes to see what a wonder it is that Christ was born as a baby through Mary.

When your circumstance seem impossibly hard and you can’t see how this could possibly line up with God’s plans and purposes and He breaks through with a gift of unexpected joy, the circumstances- painful as they are- fade in the light of hope.

Today’s reading in the Jesse Tree Advent devotional was from Genesis. About how God promised Abraham decedents that outnumbered the stars and he looked at his elderly wife and felt the aches in his 100 year old knees and chose to believe God. And when the time came, God did what he said he would do. He always does.

The question is, do I believe God’s promises? There are a lot of them. How about this one:

So let no one boast in men. For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s. – 1 Corinthians 3:21-23.

ALL! All things are yours?! The world? Life? Death?

This is why I don’t have to have this or that. I don’t have to have the perfect church or the perfect marriage or the perfect kids or house or job or circumstance. All things are mine! I belong to Christ. Believing that promise will carry me through the impossibilities I face. Just like it carried Abraham through the impossibilities he faced.

God does what he says he will do. Always.

Joy to the world… a sign that is opposed has come.

It wouldn’t make a very good Christmas carol, but the words of a guy named Simeon, who saw Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus are just as true as the more jingly, “Joy to the world, the Lord has come!”

“Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also), so that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed.” – Luke 2:34b-35

Have you sat down this Christmastime and just read through the book of Luke in the Bible? You should do it. There’s a lot of choruses and jingles and ditties and lines floating around this time of year, but when you open the Bible, it really cuts through all those bells and whistles and pierces heart-thoughts and you trip and get up and look at what your tripping over there in the text and you wrestle with it and you come away with a very real blessing. A blessing much better than anything wrapped under your tree right now. Guaranteed.

The story of Christ is amazing. Absolutely amazing. The unseen God revealing himself in the flesh. Not just taking on a coat of flesh, but really becoming a man. A baby first. Growing up in obscurity. And then living out a rejected, perfect manhood.

When I take time to sit and read the account of the coming of Christ in the flesh and the record of his human life laid down for us and the miracle of his actual resurrection and the promise of his return and my actual resurrection, I really begin to celebrate! Everything else- Christmas cookies, wrapping paper, gifts to buy, things to put in the mail, decor to hang, etc., etc.- it just gets lost in the light of the wonder of the mystery and miracle of the incarnation of Christ Jesus and the glory of how he saves.

So, this night before the night before the night before Christmas, really celebrate. Sit down. Open Luke. Read it. Wrestle with it. Talk to God about it. Maybe like me you’ll do like that guy Jacob did, as you wrestle- cling to Christ and tell him, “I won’t let go until you bless me!” And don’t. Don’t let go. Hold on to the things you hear in Luke. Treasure them in your heart like Mary. Wonder at the mystery and gaze at the massive truth and cling to the One who brought it to pass until he blesses you with a blessing of knowing, a little more, the unknowable love of Christ.

“…so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith–that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” -Ephesians 3:17-21

It’s the best Christmas gift you could ever get. Guaranteed.

Quieted,

Sheila

Advent meditation: Joy

(That was a sunrise a week or so ago.)

Well, it’s 10 O’clock, and everyone is in bed and it’s finally quiet so I can think. I’m trying to stave off some bug that’s decided to give me a dizzy-headache and sore throat in the last hour. Hot tea and lots of vitamin C I’m hoping will do the trick.

Today, joy. The third Sunday in Advent the preacher preached on joy. And I’m glad he did it the way he did. Cause it’s not that easy. It’s not a health and wealth gospel the joy of advent speaks of. It’s not, “Jesus will make you happy.” Or, “Jesus will give you what will make you happy.” It’s, “Jesus, Man of Sorrows, he knows. He knows you. He knows what caused things to not be the way their supposed to be: sin. And He came to take care of that problem. And believing that about Him brings something much more real than circumstantial happiness, something you can bank on, something warm and hopeful in you even when you feel sorrow: joy. Real. Lasting. Unstealable. Joy.”

I’m glad he did it the way he did it because honestly, I walked in that building today and when he asked the congregation if we had to pic an emoticon what would we be, I mumbled, “Depressed” under my breath.

It comes like a heavy fog that rolls in. There’s no control about when or how or why. Depression is a real deal that I’ve been dealing with for awhile now. And for the past several weeks it’s fog has been gone. Really gone. Light and pleasure and smiles and singing have filled my days even in the mundane things that can get a person down. But a few days ago it rolled in again. I felt it. I did a little inventory to see why. Is it a female hormone thing? (Note to self made about what day it fell on the calendar). Did I forget to take my medications? Is it my diet? Am I eating too much junk? Could be any and all of that and more. But this time, when it rolled in, I did not mindlessly keep wandering through the fog. I pulled over and preached to myself. “Self,” I said, “Why are you so downcast? Put your hope in God!” And then I sang it. Out loud. In the kitchen.

“Why so downcast oh my soul. Put your hope in God. Put your hope in God. Put your hope in Go-o-o-d. Why so downcast oh my soul. Put your hope in God. And bless the Lord oh my soul. Bless the Lord. He’s the lifter of my countenance. Bless the Lord. He’s the lifter of my head. Bless the Lord. He’s the lifter of my countenance. I will never be ashamed…”

The fog didn’t clear. But I was OK with knowing it was there and that, as in the past, it would clear. I’ll wait it out. The joy in me is the hope of Christ: He came. He destroyed sin and death’s power over me. He is committed to conforming me to the image of the Son and He has given me His Holy Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing that when I see Him, I will be like Him and I will be fully alive and live fully with him perpetually and not one drop depressed. No fog. No sin. That’s the joy of Advent. It’s massive. It’s greater than all our sorrows. It can handle sorrow and depression and loneliness and grief and pain. It knows Who came and Who’s coming again.

For his anger is but for a moment, and his favor is for a lifetime. Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning. -Psalm 30:5

Quieted,

Sheila

Advent meditation: It’s for freedom that he set us free

For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. …For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. – Galatians 5:1,13

I’ve been thinking about this a lot today. I used to read these verses and sort of feel lost. “It’s for freedom Christ has set us free”??? Ok. What does that mean? I mean, yeah, I’d agree that Christ set us free from the condemnation coming against us, but free? Free from what? Doesn’t God restrict, not free? If Christ has set us free are we “free” to do whatever we want? And if we’re not, is that really freedom?

If I’m honest those questions have gone through my head many times over the years. But today, after pouring my heart out to one that I love, I heard those verses in my head and it made total sense! Sin is slavery. Christ’s blood bought freedom. Freedom from sin! He didn’t die to serve us our favorite, chosen sin on a silver platter. He died to give us the power to kill sin, to break free from it’s chains, to turn to him when we find ourselves in a sin. He didn’t come to leave the dead, dead and the sick, sick and the broken, broken. He came to give life to the dead, heal the sick and restore the broken.

Until we see him face to face we will be in a battle to fight sin with faith. We have been given the power to look the slave driver of sin in the face and say, “NO MORE! I will not give myself over to you!” And when we fail, and we will fail, we have been given the grace to cut off the arm that causes us to sin and turn our minds and hearts back to the One who died to set us free.

Freedom in Christ is freedom to no longer be poisoned by the lies of sin. It’s the freedom to be sober again, to see clearly the beauty of God in Christ and realize we’ve been feasting ourselves on vomit and rottenness and poison. When we have that freedom we recognize sin for what it is and we hate it and we fight it and we turn from it when we find ourselves in it. And we can do that now, because Christ has come and purchased with his own blood the ability for us to taste the goodness of God and despise the putridness of sin. He bore or sins in his body to free us to love God and love one another not to turn ourselves back over to the destructive things that he had to die to free us from in the first place!

So when I read these verses now I exclaim, “Yes! Yes! Yes he really has freed me.” Now I hate the thing I used to think he was unfairly keeping me from. I now know he’s freed me from the thing that was keeping me from really loving Him and really serving and loving others.

And because of all this, this Advent, I’m thinking a lot about my longing for the coming again of Christ. Until that day he’s freed me to fight the fight of faith. To stand. To change my thinking. To turn to him. And when he comes and I see him face to face, the fight will be over. Until then I cling to the promise that he came to set me free and I press on to fight the good fight of faith in who He is and what He teaches me to do.

Quieted,

Sheila

Jesse Tree: Celebrating the God of promises. The God who makes life when all seems as good as dead.

I think it was five years ago now that I started doing a Jesse Tree with my sons. Each year we’ve done it a little differently. This year I gathered some branches my goats had stripped bare of all leaves, stuck them in a large vase and put some lights on them. In years past we’ve pulled an ornament out for each day and placed them on the tree after that day’s reading. But this year I decided to put all the ornaments on the tree from the start and focus more on the reading for each day. Up until this year we’ve used Ann Voskamp’s Jesse Tree readings. But this year, I decided to the family readings from the Reformed Church of America website. They’re short and to the point (which my highly distracted 11 and 9 year need right now) and they set our minds each day on the hope of Christmas.

The Jesse Tree comes from reference to, “the Root of Jesse” in Isaiah 11.

There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit. And the Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD. And his delight shall be in the fear of the LORD. He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide disputes by what his ears hear, but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; and he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. Righteousness shall be the belt of his waist, and faithfulness the belt of his loins. Isaiah 11:1-5

One of the reasons I love doing a Jesse Tree at Christmas with it’s dead branches as opposed to the pretty green fir tree is because it reminds me that my God is the God who makes promises. And keeps them. When I look back over history through the Jesse Tree readings I see that for thousands of year God has been showing himself faithful. He will do what he says he will do. And so it causes me to look forward to the promise of His return.

And all those dead branches remind me that that’s me, without Him. And that He did the miracle. He has born me again to a living hope. Out of my deadness He has caused life to come. Just as out of as-good-as-dead Abraham and Sarah, Isaac was born. And just as out of dead Israel, Christ was born. In my deadness God has birthed new life in me. His Holy Spirit is my deposit, guaranteeing one day, I will be completely new and alive with eternal life.

This is my God. He makes promises. He doesn’t lie. He keeps them, no matter how long has gone by and no matter how impossible things may seem. He will do it.

Quieted,

Sheila