I enjoy New Years for more than just the parties.  I really like reflecting on the past year and what it meant to me and my family.  This year is even more special because we are entering a new decade.  So the scope of reflection is expanded tenfold.

Think about where you were ten years ago.  Think about what you were doing, who you were dating, who you were hanging around with.  Think about what your dreams were. 

At that time, where did you see yourself in 5 to 10 years.  Did you get there?  Why or why not?  If not, how has God blessed you in other ways?

For me, I was in grad school hoping to catch onto a small but growing business.  I also wanted to get married and start a family but I wasn’t dating anyone at the time. 

In the years that followed, I did work for a small company but discovered that I didn’t like it as much as I thought I would.  So I returned to corporate America and I’ve been there ever since.  Turns out I was able to scratch that entreprenurial itch by starting a blog about my Celtics which ended up being a huge success.  Funny how God answers your prayers in ways you wouldn’t expect.  That’s why he’s God and we need to trust him even when things don’t seem to make sense.

As you might have guessed, I also met my wonderful wife, fell in love, got married, and had my first child.  Again, I wouldn’t say my courtship played out like I imagined in my romantic daydreams, but I’m with the woman of my dreams and that’s what’s important.

So where will I be in 10 years time?  Maybe I’ll be in the higher levels of management by then.  Or perhaps I’ll have left corporate America for a Sports writing career.  Who knows?

Lord willing, I’ll be raising a couple of kids, one of which will be 11 (and I’ll be cherishing the time before she becomes a teenager!).  Goodness, I’ll be 44 years old.  Sounds like a great time to buy a sportscar! 

Regardless, I mostly just hope to be following God’s lead and in turn guiding my family as a positive Spiritual leader.  If I can have that, the rest is just details.

Happy New Year!  Ok, it isn’t December 31st yet, but it is coming up this week.  Many of you will be making new year’s resolutions.  Some will go on diets, some will quit smoking, some will make some vague resolution to “be nicer” or something like that.  All nobel ideas and good things to resolve, but let me recommend a few other options.

The best thing you can do to improve your life and the lives of those around you is to become rooted in the Word of God and spend daily time communicating with the Lord – developing a personal relationship with him.

It doesn’t have to be long.  It can be just a 5 minute reading of a daily devotional and quick prayer to start off the day.  It can be 10 minutes reading a chapter of one of your favorite books of the Bible.  As long as you set aside that time to be with God (and without distractions) you will be enriched by the experience.  If you are already doing this, resolve to do something different to keep things fresh.

Need ideas?  Here are a few:

• Sign up for a daily devotional email.  See a list of them here.  I’m a fan of Greg Laurie’s, but there are lots to choose from.
• Start a prayer journal.  List the people you care most about (or even least about) and jot down some prayer requests for them.  This is fun to look back on in a few months to see how God has blessed them (and you).
• Pick a book of the Bible and read through it (a little each day).  I know many people resolve to read through the whole Bible in a year.  More power to them if they can do it, but I’m pretty sure the success rate on that is low.  Unless you are the kind of person that can follow through on long, daily commitments, I’d encourage you to start off slow.  Start with one of the Gospels (Matt., Mark, Luke, John) or perhaps one of the more famous letters (Ephesians, Corinthians, Hebrews, etc.).  You can always keep going when you get to the end.
• Plan a spiritual weekend getaway.  Sometimes you just need to remove yourself from the daily grind and find some place in the woods or by a lake to relax and empty your head.  That’s a great time to ask God what he would like to see you focused on.  Maybe it is a new direction or maybe it is just to renew your dedication to what you are doing now.  But God likes to speak to us when he has our full attention.

These are just some ideas.  Feel free to pick and choose what works best for you.  But do try to be specific in your resolution.  Saying “I’ll read the Bible more” is pretty vague and is more likely to be forgotten and neglected in a few weeks (or even days).

Also, in case you missed it, we’re entering a new decade.  Spend some time praying for the coming years.  I’ve always found New Years to be great times for introspection about the past and dreaming of the future.  But more on that in tomorrow’s post.

Pslam 67:3

May the peoples praise you, O God; may all the peoples praise you.

As a follow on to the post just below this one, it is clear that the peoples of this world are indeed praising God.  Not always in the way that they should and not always as much as they should, but one way or another, God’s praise is being sung.  In fact, he reminds us that if we are silent, the rocks will cry out in God’s name.

I’ll add a reminder that worship doesn’t end on Sunday mornings just before the sermon.  We should be worshiping the Lord in everything that we do.  Not just through song but in our actions, in our thoughts, in our focus.  If we focus on the Lord and do things as we would in his presence, we would honor him and please him.

The Lord is worthy of all our praise and more.  He gives us the privilege of taking part in the praising, so we should seize every opportunity.

I love this perspective on Christmas (via Internet Monk) called “Why I Don’t Participate in the ‘Christmas Wars’”

Think about it for a minute. Christ’s dominion is such that pagan holidays have been gutted of their original meaning and filled with the things of Christ. So much so that the original pagan meanings have all but disappeared from our culture, and would be entirely forgotten, except for a handful of atheists who desperately try to use their origins in a pathetic attempt to delegitimize the holiday. (Note that there is evidence, and good evidence, that the traditional date for Christmas is not pagan in origin, but that is an entirely other subject.)

You may be saying to yourself, “Well, our culture has forgotten the Christian meanings, too.” I say not entirely. Even then, Christ makes the Nations prove the glories of His righteousness and the wonders of His love.

The cathedrals of commerce, our shopping malls and grocery stores, play Christmas music for almost a month before Christmas. Shoppers are literally drenched with the praises of Christ while they engage in what amounts to preparation for extravagantly sacrificial giving to friends and family. Believers and unbelievers alike, once a year, spend what many people consider far too much, just to give it away. This in turn creates a huge wave of cash that washes around the globe creating jobs that allow people in other countries to buy food and clothing. I heard recently that most retail outlets don’t turn a profit until Black Friday, the first day of the Christmas shopping season. God teaches us about giving and provides daily bread for millions. All this because the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

That’s fantastic and so true.  Christ will always shine through.

Thought this was a funny post by the popular blog called “Stuff Christians Like” (a hilarious spoof off of the Stuff White People Like blog).

At the heart of the book are all the kind of magicy stuff you find in most fantasy books. Villains with evil powers. Heroes with good powers, etc. Usually, whether it’s Harry Potter or Wheel of Time, Christians tend to stay away from anything magic flavored. That’s definitely outside of our normal travels, except when it comes to our quiet times.

What’s that? Quiet times? Surely no. I say surely yes! In fact, I realized recently that I treat my quiet times a lot like a magic spell.

I think many of us are guilty of this.  Not only are we asking for a wishlist of items for God to check off on his to do list, but we’re looking for God to “move” us in some way that will justify the sacrifice of our time coming before him.

In truth, we should feel lucky just to have the opportunity to address God, regardless of what we “get out of it” – though I would argue that we get a lot out of the process of worship even if we don’t “feel” it in the moment.

Just read a very convicting blog post on Internet Monk.  Here’s the passage that hit hardest:

Evangelicals tend to ignore or downplay Jesus’ mother, in reaction to what they perceive as overemphasis or even heretical devotion to her by the Roman church and other traditions. However, the Gospel of Luke gives her great honor, portraying her as the true and ultimate matriarch of our faith. Mary joins and surpasses Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel and Leah, Ruth, and Hannah, and is presented as the mother through whom God brought his redemption promises to pass.

It is true.  I frequently discount Mary so as not to feel or sound too Catholic (not that I hold anything against the Catholic church as a whole, I just don’t believe in all their doctrines).  But Mary was perhaps the greatest faith example of a woman in the Bible.  I suppose it is wrong to “rank” people in the Bible.  They aren’t basketball players.  But like the founding fathers of our Nation, there are some that just stand out naturally.  I always think of David as being a “man after God’s own heart.”  I don’t always think of Mary as the matriarch of our faith, but I should.

I can’t speak for women, but I wonder if some of them consider Mary to be too high of a standard to live up to.  Aside from Jesus, I find a similar feeling in relation to Paul.  But Paul at least complains about having a thorn in his flesh and being the chief of sinners.  (We all know David had periods of detestable sin in his life)  But Mary seems pretty near perfect, so you can see how the Catholic faith would revere her.

Still, I think the author of the post puts it best when he says:

Many times throughout her life, the powers of the world overshadowed, pressured, and threatened this woman. yet in her song she expresses what people of faith in all generations have learned—God is not with those who wield earthly power. His heart is with those who look to him in simple faith and entrust their destiny to him.

The example of Mary isn’t of perfection necessarily.  You don’t see any cases of her doing anything wrong in the Bible, but I don’t think she’s presented as perfect either.  I believe the example of Mary is that of faithfulness and focusing on God, following his will without question.  Which is an example we all can learn from, man or woman.

That is the question for many Christians.  I’ll say up front that I will not tell anyone how to raise their children, so you are on your own to make this decision.  But I will tell you my approach and open it up for discussion if you like.

There are some compelling arguments about why Santa shouldn’t be included in Christmas.  Putting both Santa and Christ at the center of the celebration could potentially confuse children.  Santa shares many of the qualities we praise in God but not always in the right way.  For example Noel Piper has this to say:

What about Santa’s spying and then rewarding you if you’re good enough? That’s not the way God operates. He gave us his gift—his Son—even though we weren’t good at all. “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). He gave his gift to us to make us good, not because we had proved ourselves good enough.

These are fair points, but I think you can take the Santa-fear a little too far.  This is comically illustrated by John Shore:

Don’t we Christians hate the fact that that while we’re trying to have Christ be the focus of Christmas, everyone else wants the primary personality of the Christmas season to be Santa Claus?

And doesn’t that make Santa the anti-Christ?

Ho, ho, ho, indeed! The gall of The Dark Prince pretending to be jolly!

And Santa being Satan certainly explains a lot. For one, it explains the red suit. It also explains the flying reindeer.

Personally I think that there’s little harm in playing along with the Santa charade while children are still young and full of wonder as long as it isn’t presented as cold hard fact.  He’s a character in a story and for the most part he promotes goodness, charity, and generosity.  He’s based off a Saint after all, right?

I have a 1 year old, and when she starts asking about Santa, I’m going to do my best to deflect the attention to Christ.  The birth of our Lord and savior is true reason why we celebrate Christmas and all the decorations, trees, presents, songs, stories, and of course Santa are all part of the way the celebration has evolved over the years.  I don’t find anything inherently wrong with that.

The danger is in using any of that as a crutch.  If you let the children buy into the commercialism hype of Christmas without making Christ the center of it, then you risk them missing the point.  It is up to us as parents to steer them in the right direction and teach them discernment so that they’ll know how to find truth themselves.

So I say let them have Santa, but make sure they have Christ first and foremost.

Pslam 66:1-2

Shout with joy to God, all the earth!
Sing the glory of his name; make his praise glorious!

When was the last time you shouted with joy?  I would guess for me it probably had something to do with a basketball game.  In fact, I’m sure I shouted something when I saw Rondo dunk on the Wizards in their last game in D.C.

Here’s a challenge.  Make it a point to shout to God sometime this week.  Maybe pick a time when you aren’t surrounded by people that are going to think you are crazy.

And make it genuine too.  You can’t just shout for no reason.  When I shouted for that basketball play it was because it was something that moved me.  It was exciting.  A hundred reasons why I love basketball and the Celtics and Rondo in particular all welled up in me to produce a spontaneous response.  So how do you manufacture that reaction?

Start by pondering what God has done for you.  First the little things, then the many blessings you have in your life, then the way he’s blessed those around you, then on top of all that the gift of salvation.  If you go through all of that and you still can’t get up off your feet and bellow a hearty yell of joy at the Lord, then get on your knees and pray for better perspective.

There’s a time to be still and know that he is God.  There is a time for silent nights.  But there’s also a time to express your joy.  Give it a shot.  Belt it out.  God is listening.

Pslam 65:3

When we were overwhelmed by sins, you forgave our transgressions.

This is just one of the things that sets Jesus apart from all other religions.  In every other faith system (from what I’m told, I’m no religion scholar), you have to do something to earn your salvation.  Be it works or prayer or some act that proves that you are worthy of heaven.  The action always starts with the person.  This makes sense to us.  It sounds fair.

Jesus flips the script.  He goes beyond fair.  He grants us grace when we don’t deserve it.  He loves sinners despite their sin.  He reaches out to us at our lowest point and says “I adopt you as my own child.”  Our only action is that of acceptance, and that is in response to what Christ has already done.  He moved first.

Psalm 63:1

O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

Pslam 63:5

My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods; with singing lips my mouth will praise you.

Anyone else hungry?  I don’t know about you, but I’m craving some doughnut holes.  No, that’s not a self promoting plug for this site, I’m legitimately hungry.

But I’ll use it to illustrate a point anyway.  There are times when you will feel somewhat empty or drifting or maybe even a little down.  I think we need to be able to recognize these feelings for what they are.  Spiritual hunger pains.  You can try to distract yourself with another hobby or project or immerse yourself in a job or relationship, but it never quite does the trick.  But when you fill yourself with the Holy Spirit, you are never disappointed.

This isn’t to say that every time you seek God you’ll have a “mountaintop experience” and get a Spiritual high or whatever you want to call it.  Sometimes food is just food and water is just water.  It sustains and nourishes the body even if your tongue isn’t wowed by the experience.  Same with your walk with God.  Some days you just need to keep getting in the word even when you don’t “feel it.”  Otherwise you get those hunger pains.  Recognize them and feed your soul!