The Perfect Gift

A shot of our backyard this morning 

  Christmas is finally here. After a month of crazy schedules that were full of banquets, family, shopping, planning, and all the other things that come with every Christmas; its good to have made it to Christmas morning with our sanity still intact. It seems fitting that after all the hustle and bustle, Christmas morning comes to us this year as a quiet snowy morning with nothing on the agenda for the day accept enjoying the day.   

  We had our gift exchange with the kids last night. It occurs to me that there’s a certain level of anxiety that parents go through when they’re finding gifts for their children. We wonder if the gift is something that they’re going to enjoy. We hope that it will be built well enough to hold up at least until New Years. We wonder how the child will respond if they open their gift and experience more disappointment than excitement. Will they handle it with maturity and dignity or with selfishness and childishness?

  We had put a lot of thought and effort into this year’s gifts and we were anticipating it about as much as the kids were. We wanted each one to be "The Perfect Gift" It turned out to not be “The Perfect Gift” for any of them. Every child had something in their gifts that didn’t work like it was supposed to or it was different than what they were hoping for. One gift was defective right out of the box.

  The ironic thing, though, is that it bothered me more than it did my kids. I was proud of how they handled experiencing some disappointment in their Christmas gifts. They struggled with the line between honesty and complaining. Looking back, I think it was meant to be that way. I think it’s a part of healthy development to experience life’s disappointments. Disappointment is part of the human experience, and some handle it with more grace than others.

  I wonder if God ever wishes that we would handle life’s disappointment with more grace than we do. He gave the greatest gift of all time when He gave us salvation and redemption through His Son. We could focus on His heart of love towards us, or the promise of heaven and absolute perfection someday. Instead we focus on the things in our lives that are not as we wish they were.  We miss the perfect love of God, because of focusing on the imperfect experiences of life.

  Here’s a quote from my 13 year old son. “If the love of God was all you had for Christmas; would it be enough?”    

The God Question - Part I

  Recently I was having a conversation with a customer in my office. That alone isn’t that unusual, since I have a conversation with most of the people that come into my office.  As the conversation progressed though, he began boldly proclaiming that we don’t really know with certainty if there is a heaven or a hell or if God even exists at all. Ironically, it wasn’t the question of God’s existence that seemed to be bothering him as much the questions about what happens to us after we die. He was bothered by the obvious fact that after we die it’s too late to change our mind about God. He intuitively understood that the conclusions he reaches, while here on earth, about, “who God is” will have a large bearing on his eternal destiny.

  I think every person wrestles with the, “God Question”. The question takes numerous forms: Who is He? Is He aware of what is going on in my life? Is He all powerful? Did He really create everything? Does He have a standard of right and wrong? If He does, what is that standard? And how does He treat people who violate that standard?

  The answers to the God questions don’t lie in a set of rules, a system of religion, or a popular vote. Man is not equipped with the ability to find the answers by himself. You can go on “spiritual quests”, visit all the religious sites, even read the Bible and still not have the answers to the God questions. The answers are not found in us. They’re discovered in a relationship with Him.

  Unless you are a friend of God’s, you don’t really know what He’s like. Unless you regularly communicate with Him and hear His Word, you don’t know what He likes. You can’t accurately know anything about Him if you don’t know Him. The problem is that there is a huge separation between us and Him. It’s called sin. He is absolutely holy and will not have a relationship with sin. The whole point of Jesus coming as a baby in the flesh was to restore people to the God that created them and answer the God question for them. He paid the price for our sins by dying and experiencing the penalty for sins that he wasn’t guilty of.

  So the answer to the God question will only be found in a relationship with Him. In order to be in a relationship with Him we must place our faith in Jesus Christ. First we choose to believe that He is the only way to be restored to our Creator. Then we act on that belief and confess our sins and sinfulness. We allow Him to be Lord of our lives and have complete control. He responds by cleaning the inner-most part of us and filling it with His presence in the form of the Holy Spirit.

  If you’re reading this and you’ve never made that choice; you don’t have any answers and you’re not prepared to meet God after you die. If you’re reading this and you are already a believer, you may have found your thoughts drifting off because what I just said is so familiar that we don’t even stop and think about it anymore. But if you look around you, at a world without answers, what are you offering them? Do they need to stop sinning? Do they need to start coming to church? Should they start being more considerate of others? Should they change their minds about right and wrong?

  The world needs to know God and experience a relationship with Him. Jesus said that there will be people who will stand before Him on the Day of Judgment, and point to the good things that they did in His name. He won’t turn them away because the stuff they did wasn’t good enough. He will turn them away because He doesn’t know them. Don’t try to answer the God Question without a relationship.  

Does My Opinion Matter?

  So here I am with a shiny new blog. It's all clean and new. Hopefully it always stays clean, but it's impossible to keep new. One of my fears is that when the new wears off that I'll lose interest or something. I guess thats ok though; because in the whole big scheme of things, it probably doesn't matter that much.
  Or does it?

  Does my opinion matter?

  It's a question worth asking. Since most of what you read here will be my opinion, it's fairly important to me that the conclusions I reach and the opinions I form are accurate and relevant to our lives. Following, are three observations I've made about opinions:

I. Being "opinionated" isn't all bad.
 People tend to dismiss anything that can be labeled as "opinion". One of the worst things that we accuse people of is being "opinionated". Yet no one like to be around someone that has no opinion because they have very boring personalities. I actually think that everyone has opinions, but some people are so afraid of rejection that they don't know how to express theirs.

II. Truth is divisive, but that doesn't give me a license to be obnoxious. 
  We don't like any opinions that disagree with ours. The problem is that none of us are the standard for truth. We take our own views to seriously and don't take God's views seriously enough. The Truth that is from the character of God is exclusive. There can't be two opposing ideas that are both true in God. There are no divisions within Him. The division occurs when people reject truth and accept the lie. (sometimes the lie fits our opinions better)
  If my opinion is from God, then I should be open about it and free to share. It's not a bad thing to have an opinion. It is a bad thing to be obnoxious and condesending with our opinion. Many people have been turned from the truth by those who proclaimed it in the flesh with arrogance. I can drown out the truth with my voice if I'm not careful.

III. The value of my opinion is determined by it's foundation.
  It's also important that our opinions are formed from our theology instead of our theology being formed by our opinions. (how to form a good theology is another subject for another blog)
  There is a spirit of truth and a spirit of error (I John 4:6) The only way I can know the truth is by being in a relationship with the one who is Truth. The stuff that comes from me is unreliable at best. The stuff that comes from Him is truth and will stand whether we agree with it or not. Unless He gives me the thoughts to think and the opinions to believe, I have nothing to offer. If there's anything good here it's because of Him.
  If my opinion comes from Him then the answer to the question is, "yes my opinion matters". If if comes from me, then it's like most of the other gibberish you can read on the internet. - Unreliable at best