The Phil Files

A love story full of sadness and despair that ends with faithfulness with a manly twist and deep river of gracious blessing from God’s people and the LORD himself — that’s how I would characterize the incredible story of Ruth. So many biblical themes percolate in this story — care for the poor, the widow, and the foreigner, God’s faithfulness, the faithfulness of a foreigner, the faithfulness of a godly man, the love between a daughter-in-law and her mother-in-law, the way God’s Law provided blessing for the disadvantaged, and how God kept his promise to use his people to be a blessing and how he used that blessing to keep his promise to his people.

Ruth’s loyalty is rewarded by God and Boaz. Boaz’s loyalty was rewarded by God and his choice of a lineage for the King. We are reminded, in the course of this story, of God’s great love for all peoples and his desire to bring them to himself.

//Inspiration: Ruth 2:12
[Boaz said to Ruth] May the LORD repay you for what you have done. May you be richly rewarded by the LORD, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come for refuge.

//Incarnation: My take on the reading for me
I can’t help but notice all the “blessing” that goes on in such short book. Even in the middle of deep bitterness for her loss, Naomi can find a heart to bless her daughter-in-laws and look out for their best interests. This them of giving a blessing becomes the background music for this story. This is a story of God’s faithfulness to bring His blessing. But the greatest blessing of all was to be an outsider — a foreign widow — who was brought into the covenant family of the Lord. Ruth was brought into the family. I’ve got to find ways to help those who are widows and orphans and poor find their way into the protection of God’s wings of protection. Maybe it begins to start with Africa.

//Invitation: My Prayer Today
O LORD God, please bless the Malagassy students who are so close to completing their journey through school and who still need my support and encouragement. Thank you for Dale and Joyce who have offered them so much. Use me in some way to make a difference now, here, them. I also pray that you will help me do the work you want me to do in my upcoming trip to Uganda. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.

“Hey, Phil, why title your blog on Christmas eve, ‘Weeping?’” That’s a good question. And I will admit it is probably not appropriate, maybe even dumb and little on the dark side. However, in my reading from Matthew 2 today, the verse that clutched my heart was verse 18, the quote from Jeremiah talking about what has come to be called, “The Slaughter of the Innocents.”

I’m in the middle right now of getting 7 innoculations to hopefully go to Uganda with Compassion International in February. I serve on the board of Christian Homes and Family Services, an agency that seeks to help birth mothers, their babies, and those seeking to adopt a child. I am blessed with two, fantastic, grown children. I love kids. I want them to know about Jesus. I want this story of Jesus’ birth to be a treasure to each child and each child to know he or she is a special treasure to Jesus.

BUT …!

//Inspiration: Matthew 2:18
A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning; Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.

//Incarnation: My take on the message for me
So many kids, children created by God for His purpose, are caught in unspeakable circumstances. Wars, revolutions, aids epidemics, abusive situations, abandonment ….

So I am thankful that in the most precious and joyous season of the year, in the most precious story ever told, we find Jesus entering the world we know … a world where kids are endangered and hurt and abandoned … a world he came to enter, to redeem, and to bring home to Him.

And now at Christmas, I want all the joy of this season to be shared with those children who don’t know and it experience it now, and so on this most joyous of days, I want to be reminded of the full story of Jesus’ birth and be convicted that I am put here to share this good news of the Savior’s coming with those who are weeping … especially those weeping for children.

//Invitation:
O Lord Jesus, I welcome your coming and pledge myself to help children far and wide to know abouit it, to receive the blessings of it, and to be ready for Your return to take them home. Amen.

As parents, when our kids keep asking us again and again why they have to do something, many of us has reached the frustration point and repeated what our parents said to us: “You have to do this because I told you to do it and I’m your parent.” I know some folks go into histrionics and that this approach is unfair. However, a three year old can ask more why questions than a day has minutes and they simply cannot comprehend the answers to most of those questions. Somewhere along the way, they have to trust their parents are telling them the truth the best they can understand it, that those same parents are trying to do what is best for them, and their job is to simply do what they are asked to do.

As we grow older, however, we bristle under the thought that we should do something just because someone else tells us to do. This is not bad; in fact, quite often it is good to question things we are told to do and ask the ethical implications of those actions. Yet there are also things that God asks us to do that we may not understand and might not even agree with if we were honest about our emotions. Yet it is at this moment of obedience that we are changed — not into mindless robots, but into folks who have learned to trust God even when they don’t understand all the “why reasons” behind the demands of God.

In my daily reading today from Matthew 1, Joseph is confronted by the pregnancy of his promised wife Mary. She is pregnant and he knew he was not involved in causing that to happen. He faced with believing an impossible story or divorcing her. He chooses the latter, but intends to do it in a way that will not shame her, even though by all appearances she has betrayed him and shamed him. Yet God reveals through the angel in a dream the spiritual truth behind Mary’s pregnancy. His response is both convicting and inspiring.

//Inspiration: Matthew 1:24
When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife.

//Incarnation: My take on the verse for me
Wow, I’m not sure I could do this. The hurt I know he felt coupled with the unbelievable mystery that God was working in Mary had to be overwhelming. I must confess that so much of the world and my desire for self-protection makes it hard for me to be as committed to wholehearted surrender to the will of God as Joseph shows himself to be. I know there are some things I need to do simply to honor God, especially when I cannot explain them.

//invitation:
O Father, you know the weaknesses of my heart and my will. I want to trust and respond simply and obediently to your demands in my life. Please forgive me for the times I’ve been hesitant and resistant to your will. Please work through your Holy Spirit on my heart as I commit to be more genuinely yielded to Your will. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.

Years ago, I had a group of young men who were listening through a series of video tapes by Jim McGuiggan on discipleship. One of those message still impacts my heart deeply. If my memory serves me correctly, Jim’s words went something like this:

There was a time when you could go to a little town in Galilee called Nazareth. If you asked around a bit, you could find where Joesph the carpenter lived. And if you went to his house and looked in his carpenter shop, you could see a young lad in there working with his dad and you could say: “See that boy with wood shavings in his dark brown curly hair? That’s God!”

When I first heard these words, I straightened up and thought the words sounded almost blasphemous. However, theological reflection and a careful reading of the New Testament suggest that the only blasphemous thing about that event was my initial reaction! While I can’t pack the mystery and wonder of God incarnate into my feeble brain, I know that Jesus is God in human flesh.

There are three intriguing terms used to identify Jesus in my Bible reading today from Luke 2. These terms are built on top of the understanding of Jesus’ identity the holy one born to Mary, the Son of God, the miraculous child conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit. These terms are startlingly simple and plain. These terms are terms we use for ourselves. These terms reminds us powerfully of the wonder-filled reality of Jesus’ identity as both God and mortal. These terms are “the baby” (Luke 2:12), “the child” (Luke 2:40) and “the boy Jesus” (Luke 2:43). Yes, this baby, this child, this boy is “the Messiah, the Lord” (Luke 2:11). God in mortal flesh. Mystery wrapped in a diaper, getting callouses in the carpenter’s shop, and getting left behind at the Temple in Jerusalem.

More than grasping this glorious and incomprehensible wonder, we are to join the angels and the shepherds in celebration of a God so great, so daring, and loving that He would be such baby, child, and boy as He chose to be in Jesus!

//Inspiration: Luke 2:40
And the child grew and became strong; he was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him.

//Incarnation:
Sometimes, in deepest reverent humility, I need to simply let go of being able to fully comprehend some truths and just celebrate them. The incarnation of God in a baby, a child, a boy, is one of those incomprehensible mysteries. So I choose, this day, this weekend, this holiday, to celebrate it rather than analyze it. I choose to treasure these wonders in my heart like Mary did. I choose to bow in reverent awe before a God who is so lovingly great that he can stoop so low, to such a familiar place, to reach my heart.

//Invitation:
O Great God, “love so amazing, so divine, demands my life, my soul, my all.” Please accept my heart for mind cannot fully conceive such amazing love. Because of Jesus, and through Jesus, I offer you my praise, my heart, my life, and my all. Amen.

If God entering the world in the form of a helpless baby tells us anything, it is a shocking reminder that our goal in life as Christians can’t be simply to be safe. I am always amazed at how the Holy Spirit uses His inspired Scriptures to grab my heart with some fresh challenge or insight. Today, as I read through the daily Bible reading in Luke 1, I was expected to get caught up the angels, the joy, the theme of salvation, and God’s answers to devout prayer and ancient promises. All that is there and I did notice these things. However, one strange verse caught my eye and convicted my heart:

//Inspiration: Luke 1:74
… to rescue us from the hand of our enemies, and to enable us to serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.

//Incarnation: My Take on this Verse in My LIfe
I’ve heard thousands of prayers thank God for living in a country where we can serve and worship God without fear. This is a good prayer. It is a right thing to do. But, what grabbed my heart today as I think of all that God sacrificed to send His Son, was that all of these prayers leave out the last part of Luke 1:74.: … in holiness and righteousness. We want the protection from having to fear, but do we have a passion for righteousness and holiness in God’s family today? Do I have it? Why do we not talk about it more? Could this be why those who claim to be Christians don’t have a lifestyle very different from those around them? Are holiness and righteousness my passion? They must be, from now on!

//Invitation: Today’s Prayer
Oh Father, please forgive us. Please forgive me. I must confess that I am passionate about many things as I seek to serve you. But I have not demonstrated my passion for righteousness and holiness in my life, my choices, my teaching, and prayer as I should. Please empower me to a set of values like Jesus, that fully reflect both your character and your compassion. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.

In my reading today (1 Peter 2), the glorious and joyous faith of 1 Peter 1 is made the foundation of a total life re-orientation. Put in cornbread English, because of Jesus, I must be different! As I come to Jesus, I am made into a different person, joined together with others who love the Lord.

This means two new realities for me. First, like others who belong to Jesus, I am chosen by God to bring Him honor and praise (vs. 9-10). Second, I must now recognize that I am a foreigner on assignment for God in this world, called to live out the ethic of the Cross (vs. 11-24). As I live out this Cross-formed lifestyle, there will be times when the world around me does not understand who I am and what I am doing — in fact, I may face hardship, abuse and persecution. That does not mean God has forgotten me. I am even more precious to God in these times, because my Cross-formed response to the world’s harshness can become the redeeming power to change the hearts of those around me and in opposition to me. I have died to the sinful ways the world deals with things, so I can live for righteousness — living out the lifestyle of Jesus reflected in this verse:

//Inspiration: 1 Peter 2:24
He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; “by his wounds you have been healed.”

//Incarnation:
Just as we are never far from persecution when we open the letter of 1 Peter, we are also never far from the sacrificial death of Jesus (see 1:18-20 along with our verse). This is no accident. Peter is wanting us — God is wanting me — to see Jesus’ example as formative, even normative for my response as His follower, as His disciple. In today’s passage, the final quote comes from Isaiah 53 and the suffering servant song. God wants me to understand that I may have to suffer or be persecuted for my faith. But if I am, I need to make sure it is because of I living a holy, righteous, Cross-formed life rather than a retaliatory, defensive, and world-based one. I must confess, when attacked or criticized, my instinctive response is not the Christ-styled response. I have far to go in learning to live out the more redemptive side of hardship, criticism, and persecution. This teaching is not only challenging to me, but very threatening to the self-protection instinct that lives in my worldly nature. I have a long way to go here, and trust the Lord will be patient with me, but never-the-less, clearly and unmistakably work His way in my heart and my behaviors.

//Invitation:
“O Great God, be glorified. My life laid down, yours glorified. O Great God, be lifted high …”* and may your will and way take hold in heart so there is less of my base instinct and drive for self-preservation and more of Jesus’ willingness to sacrifice and redeem. In Jesus’ name I ask this. Amen.