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Does God Give Second Chances?

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By Larry Short, Community Ministry Director

Several weeks ago Pastor Martin shared from Luke 1 the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth, who desired a child but were childless into old age. God ultimately met their deepest desires and went way beyond them when Zechariah learned, while serving in the Temple, that his elderly wife would become the mother of the Prophet John the Baptist.

This made me think of Abraham and Sarah. You know the story, from the pages of Genesis: God promises Abraham a son from whom the nation of Israel would derive. But Abraham and his wife grow old, with no son in sight and the possibility seeming dimmer with each passing day. They want to wait and trust God, but it seems impossible.

So, they take matters into their own hands. At Sarah’s urging, Abraham takes her handmaiden, Hagar, who conceives Ishmael.

But Abraham and Sarah’s folly, patience and disobedience do not defeat God’s plan. Ultimately, Isaac is born.

Even when we mess up, God is still in control. His will be done.

Is a Second Chance Simply a Free Pass to “Try Again?”

So, did God give Abraham a “second chance?” The answer to that question depends entirely on what you mean by “second chance.”

If you mean that God gave Abraham a mulligan, a free pass, a chance to “try again” to get it right, then the answer is “no.” God is not a God of second chances.

But if you mean that God worked His will in Abraham’s life despite his failures, that God’s mercy and grace was new every morning (including that wonderful morning when Sarah discovered she was pregnant with Isaac); if you mean that God always gives us a second chance to believe and obey and trust Him and see Him work His will in our lives, then the answer is: “Yes! God is a God of second chances!”

Also, it’s important to note that even though God didn’t give up on Abraham and Sarah, there were still serious consequences to be paid for their disbelief and disobedience. (Due to the enmity between Isaac and Ishmael, the world is still paying those consequences, even to this day.)

Second Chances and “New Year’s Resolutions”

It’s about that time of year when many of us make “New Year’s Resolutions.” We say to ourselves: “I want to be better. I will try harder to be the kind of person God wants me to be. To be healthier, to be happier, to be whatever it is I am hoping to be.” The problem with this kind of thinking about the New Year is that it is me-centered; it assumes that my transformation will occur if I simply “try hard enough,” if I make good goals and lift myself up by my bootstraps to achieve them.

Such thinking leaves no room for God’s grace, mercy, and power. Remember, it’s not our strength and willpower that are new every morning; it is His mercies that are new every morning! He who has begun a good work in you, will be faithful to complete it. That verse doesn’t say a lot about the contribution that your own effort might make. No, it’s not up to you, is it? He will complete it.

Do We Give “Second Chances?”

But what about us? When someone hurts us, or disappoints us, or fails to live up to our expectations, do we give grace? Are our mercies to that person “new every morning?”

After washing His disciples’ feet (to their shock and dismay), Jesus says to them (in John 13): “Do you understand what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.” We often think of these verses strictly in terms of acts of (potentially unpleasant) service, but I think the implications go far deeper. Whatever service, love, grace, and mercy Jesus showed us, we would do well to also to show one another. (Unless we consider ourselves “above our Master!”)

Speaking of Second Chances …

… and of God’s grace and mercy! You all know that last Sunday (December 24) was Elim’s “Giving Sunday” event. We committed to “give away” all undesignated funding that came in through the offering that day (providing our income to spending actuals remained “in the black” as they currently appear to be) to three worthy causes, all above and beyond our approved 2017 church budget.

Some of us were a bit concerned when we looked around the sanctuary, the morning before Christmas, and attendance seemed a bit sparse. Would Giving Sunday be a bust?

So you can imagine our excitement when we were told that the total offering last Sunday was $28,161 … nearly five times Elim’s average weekly offering, and one of our largest ever! God is so good, and we are so thankful for faithful givers who responded to His leading.

Some have asked whether there would be another opportunity (a second chance!) to contribute to the Giving Sunday project (benefiting the Future Expansion Fund, the Benevolence Fund, and the Tabitha Center ministries in the Congo). The answer is yes! If you missed out on Giving Sunday due to vacation schedules and would still like to contribute, simply designate any gift made before the end of 2017 to “Giving Sunday” and it will be included in the total.

And, as you begin the new year and consider what goals you might set or resolutions you might make, be sure to seek God and thank Him — that “His mercies are new every morning,” that He will complete the good work He has begun in you, and that His grace is enough!

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Candlelight

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by Hannah Comerford

You take a candle at the door of the dim church. You stick the candle through the paper circle and hold it underneath, the wax malleable if you grip tightly enough. You clasp it gently, just enough to feel the thinnest residue on your skin.

How hard it is to wait until the last song of the Christmas Eve service to light the wick.

You find a seat in the fourth row of the right section. You leave space on the other side of you for friends who may or may not come.

You don’t need the lyrics to the carols, but you look up at the projected words anyway as you sing “O Come, O Come Emmanuel.” A cello adds an especially mournful note tonight. You sing quietly, your voice lost in the crowd of fifty or so voices.

 O come, O come Emmanuel
and ransom captive Israel
that mourns in lonely exile here
until the Son of God appear

Your mind doesn’t think of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Instead, you think of Elizabeth, her cousin. The one who spent decades of marriage childless, the pity of her village.

Suddenly the words aren’t about the Messiah anymore. In your heart, they’re about Elizabeth’s missing child who never was. The cries of the strings become her cries of mourning as she reaches middle age without conception.

They become the cries of Anna, the prophetess whose husband died in their first short years of happy marriage.

It becomes the cries of the shepherds, living outside with animals, never invited to celebrations, lonely and poor.

It becomes the cries of the Magi, the wise men who longed for a King who would not disappoint them like every person in whom they had trusted.

The song becomes the pain suffered by so many in this well-known story.

And the song becomes every heartbreak and loneliness you’ve known this last long year. 

Rejoice, rejoice
Emmanuel
shall come to thee O Israel
Emmanuel shall come to thee.

And in this you remember that their cries were not just for the missing child, the dead husband, the loneliness of being outcast, the disappointment of failed heroes. Whether or not they realized it, their cries were for a Savior, one who would make “everything sad come untrue.” A Savior who would come.

Rejoice, rejoice
Emmanuel
Shall come to thee O Israel

Shall come.

The music ends not on the completion, but on the hope of completion. The last note feels dark and unsettled, begging for the lighter sounds of the refrain, like a fairy tale missing the “happily ever after.”

The song does not recall the end of the story. It does not meet you in the happiness of Christmas morning, but it meets you in the long waiting of Christmas Eve. Like Isaiah, it looks forward to the hope that is yet to be.

You grip your candle tightly as you wait for the chance to light it. You know the time will come. 

O come, O come Emmanuel
And ransom captive Israel

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Preparing Well

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By Brian Waple

Well, it’s almost Christmas. It’s about now that I start to think of all the things we are normally doing as a family (planning get-togethers in Oregon and/or Washington, developing ideas about gifts, making a list of calls we need to make to connect with long-distance family members, dropping off presents at the UPS store for shipping) as well as things we normally do with our church community (coordinating the Christmas Eve service, wrapping things up for the year in our small-group communities, planning activities that will begin with the new year), and it starts to get a little overwhelming. Not in a bad way . . . it’s just that my calendar starts to fill up with all the things I need to “do.”

This season of Advent reminds us that this is a time of preparation. By that, I don’t mean activities that we necessarily do, although it can look like that. It’s more a state of the heart, a state of being. After 400 years, the silence that the Jews had experienced from God was about to be broken. What He was about to do would be the fulfillment of a long-awaited prophecy concerning a Messiah. But it wouldn’t come as they had expected. Rather than a mighty king overcoming the occupation forces and reestablishing Israel as a powerful empire, the Messiah would come in the form of a little baby, born to a poor couple staying in a nondescript little town south of Jerusalem. The fulfillment of the prophecy would be born out in the life and ministry of an itinerant preacher—not extraordinary, but simple. But this simple life would become the hope for us all.

So, as we prepare for Christmas this year, remember that in all the doing, take time to just remember. Remember the birth of a little baby in a plain stable on a lonely night in southern Israel. Remember a heavenly proclamation sung to those who were called to be present at the scene. And remember God’s promise to those who accept and preserve the hope brought by the birth of Jesus. Following all the events of that night, it says, “Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart” (Luke 2:19). Let us do the same.

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How did this become the norm?

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By Brian Sharpe, Senior Associate Pastor

My wife and I have norms in our marriage, parenting, and extended-family lives. We all have norms. These norms sometimes collide when we first get married or we take on roommates or even when dating someone.

Tomina and I started one norm early in our marriage because it was needed, but it hinders us now—our sleeping habits. When Tomina and I were first married, I was still in school. She worked full-time; I was a full-time student and worked part-time at a church. Tomina was as a waitress at Applebee’s. She would work from 3 p.m. until closing many nights of the week. I generally had classes in the morning and then worked at the church as needed.

When Tomina and I were first home from our honeymoon, she made the statement, “We will go to bed at the same time!” I didn’t question this statement. In her family, her parents went to bed at different times, and she wanted to change that norm. So, we agreed to go to bed at the same time. This was a great idea. The problem was, she would get home at midnight to 2:00 a.m. every night she worked. This meant that I was staying up until then to wait for her to come home. Then we would catch up on the day and go to bed. I would then get up a couple hours later and go to school. I would take naps, but it started a norm in our marriage. We were both naturally night people, but that was further solidified by our schedule. This is a norm that I have had a hard time breaking, even now that I am 40.

We all have norms. Every relationship has them. Unfortunately, they can be seen as ruts. Over the years, Tomina and I have had hard conversations about the norms in our marriage. We have talked a lot about how to love each other well. It is easy to settle into patterns and then coast on autopilot. The problem with this is that it can turn into complacency, and it can ultimately lead to a lack of intentionality. Now, this isn’t the intention of norms, but it is often the outcome.

This idea of norms affects even our relationship with God. A norm may be that when I am scared or in trouble, I run to God. That isn’t a bad norm, unless that’s the only time you run to God.

A norm could be that I go to church every week. Again, this isn’t a bad thing, as long as we understand why we go to church. We go to church to connect with God and other believers for mutual encouragement and growth. The book of Hebrews says we go to spur one another on to love and good deeds.

A norm may be that we read our Bible when we think about it or when we schedule it. This is a good norm, as long as it makes it on the schedule. A norm that we don’t want to talk about is the norm of not spending time with God in the studying his Word. That’s the downside of norms: we may create a norm in which God is only part of our lives when we are at church or when we are around people of faith, but not in our everyday life. This is a huge problem, because if we love God and are followers of God, we will spend time with God in some fashion or another in our everyday lives. We need to make sure that being with God and cultivating our relationship with Him is a norm in our life.

The other part of this is, if we have kids or are speaking into kids’ lives, we need to help them know the “why” of what we are doing to cultivate our relationship with God. First-generation Christians are excited to get to know God. Second-generation Christians get to hear the stories of what God has done with the first-generation Christian. But for third-generation Christians, being a Christian is normal to them, so they lose sight of why we do things, and in forgetting the reason, the practices become less important.

We need to stop and take inventory of the norms in our life. Our character qualities sometimes become the norm; for example, I am an angry or stubborn person. We need to evaluate these norms and make sure that we are reflecting Jesus in our marriages, parenting, friendships, and work. We need to make sure we are passing down reasoning for our norms for future generations to understand them.

What are the norms in your life? Are they what you want them to be? Are they a reflection of who Christ is calling us to be?

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Christmas Traditions: O Come Let Us Adore Him!

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By Tom Chase, Elder Board Chairman

I want to share just a few of the things we do and have done as a family around Christmas. These traditions have helped restore and maintain meaning to this incredible time of year when we celebrate Jesus!

Several years ago, we began celebrating Saint Nicholas Day on December 6. What is Saint Nicholas Day? It is a day set aside to remember the man Nicholas of Myra. He was a Christian saint who was born March 15, 270AD, and died December 6, 343. He was a follower of Jesus and a leader in the church (a bishop). He wore red robes and a pointed bishop’s hat. Names like O’ Saint Nick, Sinterklaas, and Santa are all personas derived directly from Nicholas.

Nicholas had compassion, a soft spot, for orphans. He would make little wooden toys and spiced cookies for them. Today we give gifts, and many make gingerbread men cookies.  When I was little, we had a cookie cutter of a gingerbread man. I always thought it was strange, though, because it had a pointed head — ah, the bishop’s hat from Nicholas.

Another story of Nicholas tells about a merchant sailor who lost all his ships and wealth at sea. He had several daughters, and this loss would mean his daughters would be unable to marry, as a dowry was required. Nicholas learned of this loss and what it would mean. One of the girls intended to sell herself into slavery so the other sisters could marry.  Nicholas put his plan into action — he came at night and dropped bags of gold coins through an open window. Some of the coins landed in stockings hung by the window. Because of his generosity, the girls were then able to get married.

Hanging stockings by the fireplace filled on Christmas morning, gingerbread men, and giving gifts to one another all have beginnings here.

Saint Nicholas Day becomes a time when we celebrate and remember a passionate follower of Jesus who would be happy to celebrate with us the birth of Jesus, the Savior of the world, because that is what Nicholas did with his life!

Years ago, when I was still a child, we began celebrating Christmas like it was Jesus’s birthday. I know we don’t know the exact date He was born, but Christmas has been set aside to remember that God came and was born — He became a man. As a small child, I wondered, “If it’s His birthday, where are the presents for Him, and where is His birthday cake?” That year we baked a cake and decorated it for Jesus’s birthday. If I remember correctly, we put candles on it and sang “Happy Birthday” to Jesus!

We have celebrated in various ways over the years, including by playing birthday-party games, such as Pin the Star over Bethlehem. But the one consistent part that began that first year is a present for Jesus — a wrapped package under the tree with His name on it. The package has a removable top; on Christmas day, we as a family sit down and write on a piece of paper what we want to give to Jesus in the coming year. These notes are individual and private, shared with others only if the writer desires. These notes are then placed in the box, prayed over individually, and placed again under the tree — Happy birthday, Jesus!

Over the years, before writing the new gift, I will often go back and read previous years’ gifts. What an amazing reminder of how God has met me in the gift given previously. When my kids were small, writing a note was too involved for them, so we would just encourage them to draw a picture and/or color it for Jesus. This time is incredibly precious to me — Happy birthday, Jesus!

Another thing we did, especially when my children were small, was to enact the Christmas story. We got a small, nonbreakable nativity set in which baby Jesus could be removed from the manger. A couple of weeks before Christmas, we would set up the stable and place the empty manger in the stable with some animals. At the other end of the house, Mary and Joseph would start their journey to Bethlehem. Each day at night, we would advance Mary and Joseph along and ask the kids where Mary and Joseph were on the trip, then talk with them about the story — like where and why they were going, and Mary’s condition (expecting a baby!).

As the days went by, the kids enjoyed looking for Mary and Joseph. They would travel along the tops of picture frames, bookshelves, and any flat surface along the way to Bethlehem and the stable. Mary and Joseph would arrive at the stable Christmas Eve day, and we would explain why they ended up in the stable. We would talk about how Mary was going to have the baby on Christmas morning. Each of our kids, when young, ran to the stable on Christmas morning, saying, “The Baby’s here!” They didn’t run to the tree — that came later — but they got the message, and so did I. The shepherds can show up later on Christmas to see this thing God has done. If you want, in the days that follow Christmas, the wise men can follow a path similar to Mary and Joseph’s and arrive to celebrate the coming King — worthy to be worshipped and adored!

I share these traditions not to add more things to an already-busy time of year. I know I have longed for meaning in all the busyness, not just more things to do. My hope and goal would be for us (you and I) to find freedom in celebrating the real meaning of Christmas found in the person of Jesus. Feel free to add and subtract any of these. And don’t feel like you have to do all or any of these things.

I would love to hear some of your traditions and the meaning behind them, with the hope and goal of worshipping our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ!

O come, let us adore Him,

O come, let us adore Him,

O come, let us adore Him,

Christ the Lord.

 

We’ll give Him all the glory,

We’ll give Him all the glory,

We’ll give Him all the glory,

Christ the Lord.

 

For He alone is worthy,

For He alone is worthy,

For He alone is worthy,

Christ the Lord.

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Called To Be Sheep!

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By Bill Naron

Image courtesy University of Minnesota’s College of Veterinary Medicine.

The other night, my wife and I began talking, and not just small talk. We were talking about the topic of service. I know, so typical, let’s talk about service the week going into Thanksgiving. Well, give me just a few moments to be super cliché. So, back to my wife (Sam) and my discussion, which went super late into the night. We talked about what it may look like to begin to try to infuse attitudes of service into the fabric of our family. So, wouldn’t you know that after this conversation my biblical character calendar would be talking about hospitality/service, and I would stumble upon a story in one of my favorite blogs about a family who began serving together. I just have not been able to stop thinking about this topic!

Mark 10:45 (KJV) says, “For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.” It says that Jesus Himself came to this earth to minister, or serve. He did not need to be served, but was sent to us to serve us people who were not worthy, people who were undeserving. He came to meet us in the place that we were in, no matter where that was. This makes me think of how every morning I drive down Portland Avenue, and it comes to a point where the road goes under an overpass of I-5. At this point, at any given point in time, there are numerous homeless people, and it just seems that more and more are filling the area day after day.

As a passionate follower of Jesus who desires to grow and change to be more and more like my Father and less like the world, I believe we must pull back the curtains and examine our hearts. I get the hindrances; there is just not enough time—we have soccer, piano, violin, and the list go on. Maybe we just do not feel called to do so, it is not in our ability, or maybe we feel it poses a lot of risk and danger. But Jesus Himself says that even He did not come to be served but to serve. And 1 Peter 4:10 says that with the gifts we received we should serve others.

If I am a passionate follower of Jesus, serving those around me is my calling, serving those in need is in my abilities, meeting people where they are at and serving and giving is something that is commanded of me! For Sam and me, the discussion has been, What would be a practical application of serving and a way that we can speak this core piece of the gospel to those around us? I believe that this is what needs to be done, especially if you have a family with small children. Find simple, practical things that can be done, such as making up care bags to keep in your car to give to those in need as you cross paths with them.

The next thing that was a huge epiphany for me was that I need to be willing to help and give to anyone who expresses a need, not expecting anything in return. It means that homeless guy on the side of the road. It does not matter what he does with what I give him; what matters is my heart in giving it to him. We are called to give and to serve and to not worry about receiving thanks or about whether they are really in need of it or not. Jesus served us, and we did not do anything to deserve it, and by that He set the example for how we are to serve.

In Matthew it talks about the Father separating the sheep from the goats in the end; He says to the sheep that when He was hungry, they fed Him, and when He was naked, they clothed Him, and when He was a stranger, they took Him in. To the goats He says to depart away from Him, for they did not do these things. And when the righteous asked when they had seen Him in these states, He said that what was done to the least of his brothers was done also to Him.

The challenge I see before us is this: if we view people through the eyes of a loving and caring Savior, then whatever service we do unto them, we are also doing unto Him, out of obedience to Him, and out of an abundance of love for our Father. So, the question is, Are we going to be sheep or are we going to be goats?

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