The year is ending and a new one is just about ready to begin. This is the time of year where many people take a look at their life and evaluate it. This is the time to celebrate or regret the past and move on into the future. It is out with the old and in with the new. A time of transition.

We are at the end of the holiday season. A time for togetherness, family and love. The holiday season has always been a very hard time for me. From the first of November to the first week of January, I want to hide, hibernate in my apartment. Let’s just say I do not have an idyllic relationship with my family and I always seemed to bring everyone else down or cause problems.

This holiday season, my mind has been drifting to the parable of the “Prodigal (Lost) Son” in Luke 15. The prodigal lived life with his father who loved him. He was attracted to the world by the seeming glitz, glamor and freedom. The prodigal was unhappy with his home life and was convinced he would find the happiness he so richly deserved out in the world. He left home, only to find out how deceptive and empty all of that is. He spent everything, had nothing and became everything he despised. He decided he should go home, at least his father would treat him no worse than the other employees. He expected to come home to be chastised and to be treated like a slave/employee. He came home and was celebrated over and shown how much he is loved.

This year kicking and screaming and with much fan fair (thanks I think, you know who you are), I turned 40 years old. A realization hit me (God dropped an anvil on my head). I finally came home. I came home to my Father and my family. I was celebrated over and shown how much I am loved. I came home to the Father I never knew that I had, to be loved in a way I never knew possible.

I grew up in a reformed Jewish home. I might even go as far as saying that my family agnostic. They at the very least feel that faith in God is not something to be discussed, but most likely do not really know in their mind if God exists. Growing up, there always seemed something missing out of my life. I fell into depression and acting out. I became uncontrollable at home. As I grew older it always seemed that something was missing from my life. I say that with 20/20 hindsight. I am not even sure if I knew that something was missing. I grew more and more desperate to fill that hole inside me. The more desperate I became the farther away from God I went. I slowly became everything that I hated. I was extremely depressed, very unstable and ready to die. In May 2005 somehow, someway God reached out to me and started me on the journey home to a home I never knew I had.

I have made it home to a Father that loved me so much that he created a world where he could show us His love. Even though we failed him, and became everything he hated, our Father paved a road to salvation with the blood of His only begotten Son Jesus. Our Father took the wrath and punishment we deserved and took it out on His only begotten Son in order to be able to be with us. I have come home to a church family of sisters and brothers in Christ that reflects that love. I have come home to where I belong to live a life, with a purpose and fulfillment of glorifying our God and His Son Jesus Christ.

It is with my new family I celebrate this time of year. Celebrate the birth of our King, celebrate the love of our God. Thank you God for being my Father, and Christ for being my King. Thank you to all my church family and brothers and sisters of Christ that have taken me in and have continuously reflected God’s love.

God bless you All!

I sit here early Christmas morning beginning to comprehend the sacrifice that Jesus Christ made for us. Jesus Christ’s physical death on the cross was heinous, gruesome and brutal. Jesus not only died physically on the cross, he took the punishment for all the sin of mankind. As Isaiah 53 describes so vividly is that “He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him and by his wounds we were healed.” In 1Corinthians Paul talks about “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

God took the submissive, pure and innocent lamb and slaughtered him physically on the cross and crushed him with His wrath. That is the punishment we deserve. That is the punishment I deserve. The apostle Paul knew who we were, “As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.” “Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit.” “The poison of vipers is on their lips.” “Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.” “Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know.” “There is no fear of God before their eyes.””
(Romans 3:10-18 NIV-G/K)

Jesus willingly took the punishment that we deserved. There is a word that describes what Jesus did for us it is propitiation. Propitiation means “that which appeases the wrath of God against sin.” Jesus Christ became our atoning sacrifice. His death on the cross turned aside the wrath of God.

Jerry Bridges in his book “The Discipline of Grace” describes it this way: “First God presented Him, or set Him forth as an atoning sacrifice. It is God the Father who initiated the whole plan of salvation. It is God the Father who provide the sacrifice of His Son to satisfy His justice and appease His own wrath.”

Did you catch that? God the Father KNEW he was going to have to give up his Son in order to save the wretched creatures he created.

One two cent theory is that the creation of the universe was created out of an outpouring of God’s love. God knew that by the creation of the universe we were going to need the sacrifice of His son. The plan of salvation by sacrificing His Son was created before He created the universe.

John Piper in an article called “The Suffering of Christ and the Sovereignty of God” says “The entire universe exists to display the greatness of the glory of the grace of God“ Piper goes on to say that “the death of Christ in supreme suffering is the highest, clearest, surest display of the glory of the grace of God…. The suffering of the utterly innocent and infinitely holy Son of God in the place of utterly undeserving sinners to bring us to everlasting joy is the greatest display of the glory of God’s grace that ever was, or ever could be.

Grace has been defined as the undeserved favor of God shown to those who deserve His wrath. In simpler terms it is love. All of what God has done is about love. He created us to show us his outpouring of love. He gave us the Old Covenant Law to help us realize that we need a savior. He gave us a savior, His only Son, to rescue us from the consequences of our actions. He gives us a path towards everlasting life and fellowship with Him.

In the end, Jesus had to die on the cross in order to show us how much God, the Father and Jesus the Son loves us.

Merry Christmas and remember God’s love for us!

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
(John 3:16 NIV-G/K)

“All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions — it is by grace you have been saved.”
(Ephesians 2:3-5 NIV-G/K)

Every Sunday I go to a Remembrance Meeting. This is a time where we praise and worship God, we take the Lord’s Supper and we remember what God and Christ has done for us. I am a Christian and this is a central point of my life. Sadly, sometimes I find it very easy to gloss over what the Son of God has done for us. We are talking about the greatest tragedy, the greatest love story and the greatest victory of all time. Nothing that man has ever done, will do, or could do, could compare. My goal over the next several days is to write about the tragedy, the love story and the victory that our Savior gave us to help us remember the importance of living for Him.

Jesus, the Son of God, who is holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens, tempted but never sinned. He had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth. He came down to earth as a man, ”but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death — even death on a cross! He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter. (Hebrews 4:15; 7:26 Philipians 2:7-8; Isaiah 53:7,9). And that is exactly what we did to Him.

In the United States, in this day and age we execute people as humanely as possible. Execution is the exception, usually taking years before it happens making sure every legal recourse is taken. Two thousand years ago, there was no such legal protection. Crucifixion was designed to produce a slow death with maximum pain and suffering. There is an article written by doctors at the Mayo Clinic and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association called “On the Physical Death of Jesus Christ,” which details the physical trauma that the human body goes through in crucifixion. This article gives us some perspective on what a heinous death our Lord suffered. The article details how flogging was the legal preliminary to most crucifixion, the whip typically used had sharp sheep bones and iron balls braided into it. It details how scourging would tear into the underlying skeletal muscles and produce quivering ribbons of flesh. Usually by the time the flogging is done the victim is going into shock. It talks about the condemned having to carry the cross bar (patibulum) which weighs between 75 - 100 pounds and carrying it to execution ground. The Romans then took the spikes and nailed His wrist to the cross. The positioning of the spike went through nerve and muscle would have caused excruciating pain. To prolong the crucifixion process, a horizontal block would be secured serving as a crude seat. One poignant detail to me is this statement ”The major pathophysicologic effect, beyond the excruciating pain, was a marked interference with normal exhalation…. Adequate exhaltion required lifting the body by pushing up on the feet and by flexing the elbows and adducting the shoulders… However this maneuver would place the entire weight of the body on the tarsals and would produce searing pain.“ Crucifixion was not about killing someone it was about torturing him, punishing him, death was only the end of the process.

Christ came down as the least of men, to be tortured and to die the most humiliating and painful death man could conceive. Jesus certainly didn’t have to do this, he could of stopped this at any time, he could of called legions of angels to prevent this. Why didn’t he? One answer is found in Matthew 26:53-54. Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?”

More on this in part 2.

I haven’t written because I have been dealing with personal issues. My life is a mess right now. I don’t have a job right now, don’t have money to support myself and feel very discouraged right now. (Blah, blah blah blah blah)

Whenever my life seems to fall apart , that seems about every week, I feel I have no right to share my life journey with God. Maybe I have that backwards. Maybe as my life is falling apart I need to be writing and sharing

I don’t claim to be smart. I don’t claim to be a teacher. I am not a bible scholar. I wish I was sometimes. All I am is a struggling Christian trying to follow my Savior and to live a life that glorify Him.