The Phil Files

“Rejoice! Rejoice! Immanuel, has come to thee, O Israel!” These words from “Come O Come Imannuel” ring in my heart this time of year. And as I read my daily Bible reading from 1 Peter 1 this morning, I realized that I can’t remember ever reading this chapter this time of year. This letter from the passionate apostle Peter is a call to holiness and faithfulness in the face of persecution. I wasn’t sure how I would hear it fresh today in light of the season and my personal circumstances.

Clearly I heard the call to holiness — to not be conformed to the world, but live here as a foreigner on a mission (vs. 13-17). I was reminded of the price of my pardon, deliverance, and grace (vs. 18-21). But I also noticed the powerful praise “hymn” that Peter uses to begin his letters (vs. 3-12). There’s even mention of angels (vs. 12) and it is all about the “good tidings” and “great joy” at Jesus’ coming! But one verse grabbed my heart and reminded me about an event in the history of the world when I would have loved being a shepherd.

//Inspiration: 1 Peter 1:8
Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy …

//Incarnation: My take on today’s message
With a day of discouragement yesterday, I had a choice this morning: be a grump or get a grip on the season. I choose the latter. I want to be “filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy” because of the coming of Jesus to earth. With all the distractions of the secular side of things and with all the pressures of leading in God’s family, I choose “inexpressible and glorious joy”! So I commit to day to not let the “stuff” of life, leadership, and busy-ness of the season steal from the Lord of life and light. I did not see Him when He was born like the Shepherds, but I do believe and I love him for His coming and I choose to be “filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy” … even if I do get stuck in one of those long Christmas check-out lines!

//Invitation:
Come Lord Jesus, come, and fill my heart with Your grace and my heart with inexpressible and glorious joy! Amen.

In our reading for today, 1 Samuel 3, I love two of the phrases — “the lamp of God had not yet gone out” (vs. 3) and God “let none of Samuel’s words fall to the ground” (vs. 19). Simple and powerful ways to talk about God’s involvement in the lives of His people.

The other observation that I guess I’ve never made before, is with this chapter and John 21 when Jesus calls Peter back to being a shepherd after Peter’s three denials of the Lord. Samuel is called three times and the fourth time he recognizes and follows completely. The Lord calls Peter three times, and then he has to call him a fourth time because Peter is still trying to cling to the comparison game between himself and the beloved disciple. Somewhere along the way, we all have to abandon ourselves and our agendas to the one who can keep our lamps lit and our words off the ground.

//Inspiration: 1 Samuel 3:19
The LORD was with Samuel as he grew up, and he let none of Samuel’s words fall to the ground.

//Incarnation:
For me, I have a hard time choosing just one verse between the two that resonate in my heart today. I don’t want the lamp of God to go out in my life … not yet … I believe there is much for me to do and influence for me to bring. But then, it’s not my choice. While bad habits and irresponsible behaviors can shorten my life, only the Lord can keep the lamp lit! Probably more important for me today, a day I feel a bit frustrated and disappointed about a certain area of leadership, is that the Father not let any of my words fall to the ground. So often, I have been humbled into realizing that even my best words cannot sustain what needs to happen in people’s lives. While this is humbling, sometimes even humiliating, it is also a good. I can sow … I can share … I can write … I can speak … I can try to convince and persuade … but only the Lord can make the words alive, powerful, and life-changing. Even then, those words have to fall on open hearts. That means any good I’ve done is simply a surrender of my work to the Master. Now if I can learn to surrender more completely and have fewer words fall to the ground!

//Invitation:
O Father, help me better know Your will, follow Your voice, and speak Your message. I pledge to be a more disciplined and committed servant in the use of the gifts you have given me. Mold me and use me by the power of Your Holy Spirit, and when the messages I share are true and helpful, please keep my words, your words, from falling to the ground. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

I’m not sure what sense would be assigned to this eerie feeling, but I do know that many of us can discern when someone is looking at us even though we cannot see them. We have this subtle sense of their presence. If they enter the room with us and our back is turned, quite often we can sense their arrival. We have a certain presence.

In much the same way, when God enters into our worship experience — and this can be private, or with a small group, or in a huge gather — we leave charged up or convicted or moved because we know we have been in the active presence of the LORD.

Samuel will become one of God’s greatest leaders, helping God’s people span between the chaotic times of the Judges through the first two Kings of Israel. God’s work and word are made known in Samuel’s life. And I believe the “secret” to his leadership is simple to discern: Samuel was nurtured in the presence of the LORD — see 1 Samuel 2:18, 21, and 26.

//Inspiration: 1 Samuel 2:21b
Meanwhile, the boy Samuel grew up in the presence of the Lord.

//Incarnation: My take on what this verse means to me today
If I am ever going to amount to anything of significance for the Lord and his work, then I must spend time in his presence, listening for his voice, and seeking after his will for me in his Scriptures. Nothing can replace or displace the importance of this time with the Father and growing up in his presence.

//Invitation:
O Father, please enter into my life. Please make your presence and work in my life known and real to me. Please be with a few folks in particular who are battling significant health crises. Bless them with your presence and help them to enter into their future with confidence, knowing that you are at work in their lives. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.

As I visit with people who are broken and discouraged by life, quite often the first thing to go in their life is genuine worship of God. As I read 1 Samuel 1 — our reading for today — I can’t help but notice words used by Hannah to refer to her emotional state — misery, deeply troubled, great anguish, and grief. These are words that speak to an intolerable situation that appears to be intractable and irreversible. But, Hannah never quits going on the yearly pilgrimages to worship God. She pours our heart to him even though it appears he does not hear and surely does not respond. She persists and her perseverance is rewarded!

//Inspiration:
Eli answered, “Go in peace, and may the God of Israel grant you what you have asked of him.”

//Incarnation:
Like so many folks in my modern Western culture, I want instant everything. Perseverance in prayer is not only hard, but something I seldom attend to consistently. I pray about something a few weeks and another urgent item forces out the once passionate focus I had on another item. I must be more intentional, consistent, focused, and persistent in my true concerns in prayer. For me, that is for a few folks I know to come to Christ and for certain members of my family to be blessed in a very specific way. Most of all, I must continue ask that God grant “the good thing.”

//Invitation:
O Father, please forgive me for my shallow commitment and inconsistent focus. I continue to pray that you bless our church with renewal from your Spirit. I beg for your grace to fall on those I love and bless them with life. I ask that you continue to work to bring about “the good thing” and open the doors for goodness to come those who need it out of that blessing. Finally, dear Father, I pray that you will be glorified in the ways that I respond to your answers to these request. You have been gracious, merciful, forgiving, and empowering to me. I cannot thank you adequately, but please receive my heartfelt thanks and praise, in Jesus’ name. Amen.

“Tough times don’t last, but tough people do.” Sounds like a slogan written by someone not facing tough times! Hidden in this statement, however, is a challenge to hear the promise of God to never abandon us nor ever let anything separate us from his love (Read Romans 8:28-39 to get reminder of these truths!).

As I’ve poured over the story of Mary, the mother of our Lord, I am caught on one powerful statement that occurs as she is invited into the mystery and messiness of being the mother to the Messiah. In Luke 1:38, Mary says, “I am the Lord’s servant … May it be to me according to your word.”

While she could not understand the mystery, she would have had a pretty good idea of the trouble a pregnant girl would have been in while living in her small village called Nazareth. She would have known the skepticism that would have greeted her with the unbelievable tale of an angel of the Lord and of the Holy Spirit’s work and of God choosing a nobody, a poor little peasant girl from Nazareth. After all, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” (John 1:46)

And she would be correct in her guess of the messiness. Jesus was greeted with the slur about about his conception by being called the “son of Mary.” His greatness in teaching would lose its luster in the eyes of his family and the friends who saw him grow up in Nazareth and couldn’t believe anything would ever become of the carpenter of Mary and Joseph’s house.

But Mary was right in accepting the Lord’s invitation. The skeptics were wrong. And the promise of God from Malachi 4, our reading for today, still holds true:

//Inspiration: Malachi 4:2
“But for your who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its rays. And you will go out and frolic like well-fed calves.”

//Incarnation:
I’ve heard it in the Lord’s Prayer: “Hallowed be your name.” I’ve even prayed it and added the following phrases, “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” But if I’m honest with myself, I’m not sure as full as I am of my own skeptical and analytical and empirical time, that I truly know what it means to “revere” God’s name — to hold as holy and precious the power and presence of God in my life. I fear I am too profane and crude and base. So I take me challenge and my promise from this verse. My challenge is to learn to be more God-aware in each moment of my day and be more God-praising for each blessing and opportunity to share grace. I also want to show the unrestrained joy of knowing that this God has loved me and called me to himself, so I will go out and frolic, rather than withdraw and criticize, with those who live in the world around me. It’s time to take my light out from under the bushel, my study time out of the closet and into the Starbucks, and my praise out of the sanctuary and into the world of need.

//Invitation:
O God, please help me believe that in the darkest of nights, the sun will rise with healing in its rays and that the story you made happen with Mary, Joseph, and Jesus can happen in my heart, my life, and my time. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.

I’m in the fifth decade of my life. Socially and morally, many things have changed in the last three decades of what some would call my “adult years.” Other things have not changed. Still others seem to have come full circle. However, the attitude toward people of faith, especially believers in Jesus, has changed radically. Recent surveys show that the significant majority of people in Western culture look at Christians unfavorably or as people to be pitied or as folks who are out of touch and irrelevant.

Many moral values rooted in the Judeo-Christian ethic are now seen as closed-minded, bigoted, and evil. It’s as if someone switched the price tags in a big department store and the expensive items are now cheap and the inexpensive items are now costly. The words of Malachi 3 — our reading for today — sound hauntingly relevant as descriptions of our time. We live in a time when evil is called good and good is called evil (Malachi 3:15). Even when God speaks directly into the lives of His people, they question Him and His words (notice the “you ask” comments in 2:14; 17; 3:7,8,13).

The real issue for believers is whether or not the folks who truly reverence the LORD Almighty will get together and pledge to live His life and reflect His character in our day-to-day lives. And lest we forget, these are not values the Christian political right completely espouses — look at the list in 3:5 of the evil things they are doing, then see if they don’t sound eerily similar to things many charge the Christian political right with neglecting in their “God-agenda” — lack of concern for the poor laborer, for the disenfranchised, and for the rights of foreigners and aliens. Somehow we’ve got to keep the character of God (the personal moral call of Malachi 3:5) and the compassion of God (the public moral call of Malachi 3:5) together.

However, if those who truly reverence the LORD get together and show by their lifestyle and life-changes that God’s ways matter most, the Almighty says that He will not only have compassion on them, but that He will also restore a sense of right and wrong to their land. Is there any greater need in our day? So hear God’s promise:

//Inspiration: Malachi 3:16-18
Then those who feared the LORD talked with each other, and the LORD listened and heard …. concerning those who feared the LORD and honored his name. …. [Then the LORD Almighty said] “And you will again see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between those who serve God and those who do not.”

//Incarnation:
So often I find the values of our anti-Bible and anti-Christian world aligned against those who are people of faith. That is not surprising. This has always been the case. The biggest disappointment is when people of faith not only violate the ethical standards they proclaim, but they also live to lower standards than those who have no faith. Other times, believers pick and choose the values of God we want to live and discard others equally important because selfishness, politics, or peer pressure win out. The basic issue is simple: God’s ways, God’s truth, and God’s people are most often maligned and rejected because of the hypocrisy believers display in our lives and words. As survey after survey reveals ethical standards practiced by those claiming to be Christian are not much different than non-Christians, we realize that “we” are the problem. We haven’t gotten together, humbled ourselves before God, repented of our hypocrisy, and gone out and lived what we profess. In this world of cynicism on the part of unbelievers, and hypocrisy on the part of many believers, I must I live what I proclaim. It’s got to start with me. I’ve got to tone down my talk and tune up my walk if my life is to make a difference in a culture skeptical of what I believe.

//Invitation:
O Father, forgive me for the times I’ve wanted culture to make my ethical decisions easier and for the times I have not lived up to the character and compassion of Your nature. I pray for strength to be a good example of a person of character, compassion, and faith. And be with others of your people who are trying to come together and better reflect Your nature and Your will in their lives. In Jesus’ name. Amen.